Please be advised of the following price updates for Official CON29DW products, effective from 1st May 2022:
| Residential | Price Increase |
| CON29DW Geodesys (Anglian Water) | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Northumbrian Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Safemove (Yorkshire Water) | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Severn Trent Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW South West Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Southern Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Thames Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW United Utilities | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Welsh Water | + £2.50 |
| CON29DW Wessex Water | + £2.50 |
| Commercial | Price Increase |
| Geodesys (Anglian Water) – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| Northumbrian Water – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| South West Water – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| Southern Water – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| Thames Water – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| United Utilities – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| Wessex Water – Commercial | + £5.00 |
| Commercial Extra/ Plus | Price Increase |
| Severn Trent – Commercial Extra | + £18.00 |
| Safemove (Yorkshire Water) – Commercial Plus | + £9.00 |
Please note: this price increase only applies to Official CON29DW searches. The OneSearch DW will remain at its current cost.
Our Drainage and Water search is a key report in residential transactions, supporting your due diligence. The OneSearch DW clearly identifies the connection status of the Mains Water, Foul Sewer and Surface Water Sewer of your property.
To view our product card, click here. You can also view our current sample report here.
If your bundles include any Official CON29DW products, your account manager will be in touch. If you have any questions or comments, please email intro@onesearchdirect.co.uk or get in touch with us on 0800 052 0117 and we will be more than happy to assist you.
No personal search service at London Borough of Hackney
Since the cyberattack at London Borough of Hackney Council in October 2020, the Local Authority have been unable to access or provide information in the Local Land Charges register and CON29/0.
OneSearch Direct have received an update from the Local Authority advising that they have been able to retrieve some information on the Local land Charges register and CON29/0 and will be able to provide a partial search report. This report will provide elements of the LLC1 and CON29/0 but will not cover a full search.
The Local Authority have also advised that they will no longer provide a personal search service for the foreseeable as they currently have no public register available.
Regrettably, this means that OneSearch Direct will be unable to provide a regulated search service in in the London Borough of Hackney Council for the following products.
- OneSearch Prime
- OneSearch Duo
For clients with an outstanding order for either of these products, we can provide the following options:
- Cancel your order, free of charge.
- Change your OneSearch Prime or Duo to our OneSearch Express product, which is a comprehensive No Search insurance policy of £1Million, combined with real-time Local Search Enquiries (CON29R Data). This can be returned in 2-5 working days.
- Leave your order outstanding indefinitely and obtain a Search Delay insurance policy. For a Search Delay Insurance quote, please click here.
We have contacted everyone affected by this, however, if you require assistance, please email delayedsearches@onesearchdirect.co.uk, stating your order number and we will endeavour to action your request as quickly as possible.
Referral panel or introducer work: Please ensure you liaise with the originating referral panel or introducer prior to amending any search pack.
We apologise for any inconvenience and will provide further updates as soon as London Borough of Hackney are able to commence their personal search service.
Today marks our one-year anniversary of joining the Landmark family. At the time of our acquisition, we steeled ourselves for a period of adjustment and growth. When we published our blog “How to fix these 4 conveyancing mistakes in 2020” we said our word for 2020 was expansion. Little did we know how accurate this would be!
When lockdown arrived in March we were in a fortunate position, as we’d already spent the previous year enabling remote working for our staff. When the time came to implement our business contingency plan, we simply rolled out this initiative to the rest of our people. The advantage of using all Cloud based applications enabled a smooth continuity of service to our customers, and we cannot emphasise enough our gratitude to all OneSearch employees for adapting with such ease.
The return of the housing market in May created a flurry of new transactions, jostling for space alongside the 450,000 people who’d been unable to progress their plans to move house. The bottlenecks appeared quickly as conveyancers contended with COVID-related congestion at every stage of the property transaction. Our Express indemnity policy has been invaluable for keeping transactions moving during these times, and will become more prevalent as we get closer to the Stamp Duty holiday deadline.
In June we celebrated 10 years of our Drainage & Water search, having surpassed over a quarter of a million sales. We’re delighted to see OneSearch DW become an integral part of the homebuyer transaction, as more conveyancers recognise its value and make it a standard part of their search bundles.
By October we were reporting record high volumes across the board. In September 2020, we processed 93% more regulated local authority searches and an astonishing 127% more drainage & water reports than in September 2019. Celebrating another milestone, we also surpassed 5 million local, drainage & water, and environmental searches.
As we near the end of 2020, we can look back with pride, and look forward with optimism. Simon Brown, CEO of Landmark, commented: “What you have achieved in the last 12 months has been incredible, and we are delighted to see you all settle in. Acquisitions and integrations can be complex and challenging, but this has been a resounding success.“
Now it’s time for a breather.
Never has our industry been so in need of some downtime, and we hope you are able to enjoy a spot of respite before we launch ourselves into another unpredictable year. As much as the world may change, some things will stay the same: we’ll still be fighting against cybercrime; people will still move home and, until we hear any different, we still anticipate the cliff edge of the Stamp Duty holiday deadline on 31st March.
At OneSearch, we’ll be here to support you every step of the way.
Thank you for all your support in 2020, and we wish you all the very best in 2021.
From all at OneSearch Direct
Please be advised we will be closing on Thursday 24th December at 1:00pm, and reopening on Monday 4th January at 8:30am. We’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Hackney has become the first local authority to announce that searches will now miss the stamp duty holiday deadline. As a result of a cyber attack which has left the council unable to process searches, Hackney recommend indemnity insurance as the only way to ensure completion before the 31st March 2021 deadline. The latest update on their website has been reproduced below:
Land searches and planning applications
“The systems that the Council uses to process new planning applications and the land searches needed for property sales are affected.
“We are hoping to offer a partial land search service in the coming weeks, but we don’t expect to be able to offer full land searches to any resident before the end of the stamp duty holiday. We are therefore advising residents who need to complete a property purchase to speak to their lender or mortgage broker about taking out indemnity insurance. We will be contacting current applicants next week to tell them which elements of the land search we will be able to complete.”
At OneSearch, we can support you with OneSearch Express, our indemnity policy which provides a data-rich alternative to standard No-Search Insurance, as it also includes a comprehensive report pertinent to a client’s property. Typically returned in just 2-5 working days, Express provides the majority of data (over 70%) that you would typically obtain from local authorities, meaning you and your client can complete quickly, and with more confidence.
Our clients have been using Express since 2015 for instances where search delays have put transactions at risk of collapse, and our claims record is exemplary: there are no claims resulting from our Express searches. This is due to the accuracy of our data, and triple quality check methodology. No other company exists with our dataset, comprised of real-time and historical CON29 data.
Click here to download sample report
Express provides cover up to £1m (£2m for commercial) in place of the following searches which are increasingly causing unacceptable hold ups:
- A Search of the Local Land Charges Register form LLC1
- A Search of CON29R and/or CON29O records
- A Search of Water and Drainage records on CON29DW
- A search of the Coal Authority’s records on form CON29M
- An environmental risk assessment (excludes Commercial Express)
- A full Chancel Repair Liability search
The Express report includes over 80 data points, including (but not limited to):
- Road, Rail and Traffic Schemes
- Planning applications and Local Development Plan policies
- CIL question 3.10a
- Building Works, Environment, Health & Safety, Housing, Highways and Public Health
- Enforcement Notices, Stop Notices, TPOs, Listed Building Repairs etc.
- Conservation Areas (proposed or pre 1974)
- Compulsory Purchase
Express allows you to transact with the most data currently available, and lets you tie matters up swiftly and get on with your next case.
Click here to download sample report
Today’s Conveyancer has published an article today on the cyber attack on Hackney Council, which has brought the local housing market to a near stand still as the council recovers from the impact of having its systems severely disrupted.
Our MD, Liz Jarvis, comments:
“At the moment our current turnaround for Hackney regulated searches is 55 days, however, as there’s still no update on when Hackney will resume searches, we anticipate this may rise. This has clearly been a severe cyber-attack, but they’ve been able to mitigate the wider human impact by setting up new services quickly using cloud services, for things like benefits payments, safeguarding referrals and establishing a system to pay for free school meals over the half term.
“We can only hope they adopt the same quick thinking and use of technology to create a more robust system for returning searches, instead of reverting to a vulnerable system that’s proving quite so difficult to restore. In the meantime, we are working closely with all local authorities to achieve the quickest turnaround times, and the latest updates can be found on the regulated searches turnaround table on our website.”
We are reaching out to the wider property community to create a unified resource in managing homebuyer expectations during COVID-19. This is in response to reports of increasing levels of abuse towards conveyancers and other stakeholders within the housing industry.
Elizabeth Jarvis, Managing Director, OneSearch Direct, comments:
“As a search provider, we’re concerned about the situation unfolding. Turnaround times for regulated local searches are increasing daily, with Harrogate currently taking 100 days, South Cambridge District Council 75 days, and Thanet taking 40 days (as of 15th Nov 2020). There are many reasons why delays are increasing; detailed further in our daily turnaround table, and these bottlenecks are building more pressure by the day. Volumes have risen, but the resources necessary for councils to facilitate them have not. The situation is untenable and there needs to be a solution now.
“Unfortunately the disparity over how each council operates is a longstanding issue, magnified by this pandemic. The lack of uniformity in processing search requests has a lot to do with why some councils take 3 days and others 45. This is not a criticism of the councils, as we maintain excellent relationships with them and feel their pain too. No one is immune from strained resources today. My comment is more an indictment of the neglect to future-proof such a vital part of the property chain. Of course, nobody could prepare for COVID, and we know current volumes are not permanent, but the way we react now will have a lasting impact.
“We know searches are only one part of the wider picture. As we are similarly beholden to service levels outside of our own remit, we empathise with those in the same boat. What is happening now is nobody’s fault. The focus, in my opinion, needs to shift from one of blame, to one of creating solutions.”
As reported in Today’s Conveyancer last week, conveyancers are working excessive hours to the detriment of their physical and mental wellbeing, mostly to maintain their normal standard of service. In our latest newsletter, we asked subscribers to share their views on this topic. Jacqueline Emmerson, Managing Director and Solicitor from Emmersons Solicitors, said her staff had been subjected to abuse for months, including posting libelous comments on social media. One angry client even entered the law firm’s office, which was closed to the public, and shouted at staff whilst not wearing a mask, putting them all at potential risk of COVID. Jacqueline said, “clients seem to have lost all sense of politeness and kindness.”
Lidia Quinlan, Head of Sales, OneSearch Direct, comments:
“When we read comments like these, we are obviously horrified. COVID has brought out the best in a lot of people, but it’s also unfortunately brought out the worst in others. We’re hearing of more and more conveyancers being subjected to verbal and online abuse, which is obviously unacceptable. It beggars belief that frustrations are being directed toward those working tirelessly to secure the biggest investment most of us will ever make.
“There is no point blaming lenders, estate agents, conveyancers, search providers, surveyors, vendors, because at the end of the day all hands are tied by some obstacle. Any hostility in our industry is misplaced and wasting effort that could otherwise focus on finding a solution. There is no doubt that the home buying and selling process needs review, but what we need right now is an immediate fix. What can we do now to stall this rise in fall-throughs?
“When it comes to searches, the ways we’ve been stemming the flow are threefold. We can obtain information for an additional cost from local authorities to reduce regulated local search turnaround times. We are also offering search delay insurance to allow conveyancers to transact with protection from financial loss, for the duration between the search being applied for and returned. We’ve also been offering our Express indemnity policy for times when transactions are at real risk of collapse.
“What we’d most like to achieve right now, though, is to manage everyone’s expectations. Not just our clients but their clients too. Our extended turnaround table for regulated local authority searches is updated daily and can be accessed freely by conveyancers and their clients alike. We are also working with firms around how best to communicate changes with an informative resource. This will be a brief and simplified explanation of why homebuying is taking so long at the moment, and we invite anyone in the industry to share it, to educate the anxious homebuyer and set clear expectations.”
This is a breathing document, so we invite others from the industry to add their views by emailing digitalmarketing@onesearchdirect.co.uk. The more rounded the picture, the higher the hope of tempering flames.