A-Z of Services

Local Land Charges

Welcome to Wrexham County Borough Council's Local Land Charges.

Here we aim to provide property conveyancers with an easily accessible guide to local authority searches, including fees and details of other relevant organisations. We hope the information provided will answer some of the questions we are most often asked, which will save time and speed the search process up for you.

The Council has a Statutory duty under the Local Land Charges Act 1975 to maintain a Register of Local Land Charges.

Our normal offices hours are: Monday to Thursday: 8.45am to 5.15pm and Fridays: 08.45am to 4.45pm.

Responses to search enquiries can be obtained by the following methods:

1. Submitting a Local Authority Search

Searches can be submitted by post and document exchange (DX) or electronically, using the Land Charges Request Form or via NLIS (external link).

When submitting a postal Local Authority Search, please ensure you enclose the following:

Form LLC1 in duplicate
Form CON29 in duplicate
The correct fee (see fee schedule below). Cheques should be made payable to Wrexham County Borough Council.
Searches must be submitted with a plan. Please clearly mark the outline of the area to be searched against in red. It is crucial that the plan also shows the surrounding roads/properties.

Please note

We do not charge a separate fee for expedited searches, but should a search request be considered urgent please contact the land charges unit and we will endeavour to give the search priority.
The current turnaround time for searches is 3/4 working days.

Online Land Charges Request Form | Download the Land Charges Request Form

Free Refresher Search

The unit offers a free refresher service for full searches. This will enable the person who submitted the original search to request a free update within 6 months of the original request by completing a refresher search request form.

2. Access to Property Data under the Environmental Information Regulations

Access will be provided to Environmental data in order for information to be obtained regarding local search enquiries as follows:-

Contact the relevant department (see below) to make an appointment to inspect the source information

Please note it is your responsibility to inspect and interpret the source information. Assistance in interpreting documentation cannot be provided by the department.

Department	Questions
Building Control Lambpit Street Wrexham Tel: 01978 292491	1.1 (f - h) 3.3 3.7 (a) 3.8 3.13
Highways Unit Crown Buildings Chester Street Wrexham Stephen Jones Tel: 01978 297158	2 (a – d) 3.2 3.4 (a – f) 3.6 (a – k) 3.7 (a)
Land Charges Guildhall Wrexham LL11 1AY Tel: 01978 292021	3.9 (a – n) 3.11
Planning Department Lambpit Street Wrexham Tel: 01978 292491	1.1 (a – e) 1.2 3.1 3.5 3.10
Public Protection Ruabon Offices High Street Ruabon Wrexham Tel: 01978 813722	3.7 (b, c, d, f) 3.12

Scale of Fees

Request	Fee - Postal Application	Fee - Online Application
LLC1 only - whole part of the register	£6.00	£4.00
LLC1 and CON29R (Residential)	£100.00	£75.00
LLC1 and CON29R (Commercial/Industrial)	£125.00	£100.00
CON29R Part 2 Enquiries	£10.00 each	£10.00 each
Additional Enquiries	£17.00 each	£17.00 each
Additional Parcels of Land	£11.00 each	£11.00 each

The National Land Information Service (NLIS)

The NLIS is a government initiative aimed at delivering services electronically, with the ultimate aim of speeding up the conveyancing process by using electronic transactions.

The service connects law firms, conveyancers and data providers such as HM Land Registry (external link) and local authority Local Land Charges Registries.

At Wrexham we are connected to NLIS at level 2 and are able to receive search applications and fees electronically and also return them electronically.

We encourage the users of our service to become NLIS users. To find out more (including fees) please go to www.nlis.org.uk (external link) or visit the websites below:

NLIS Channel Providers (external links)

www.searchflow.co.uk
Tel: 0845 250 7040.

The Local Authority (Charges for Property Searches) (Wales) Regulations 2009

Local Land Charges-Raw Data Estimated Costs & Number of Searches 2009/2010.

The unit charges for property records has been calculated as follows The estimates of total cost for raw data searches is £59,720.

The estimates of number of raw data search requests is 1280.

The basis for those estimates is in accordance with Regulation 6(2) - The reasonable estimate of the likely costs in providing access to property records. The most cost effective way of providing this service is the provision of a one stop shop based in the Land Charges unit where economies of scale and use of IT enable the unit to provide this information cheaper than the searcher visiting individual departments for the information.

Search numbers are based on the figure of 1217 personal searches received in 2008/9 plus a small percentage increase.

As provision of access to information is produced via our Land Charges software we are only able to provide access to information in compiled format.

We are also unable to provide answers to individual questions due to the inflexibility of our software. However we are currently working with our software suppliers to address this problem.

Raw Data	£ (cost)	Departments
1. Direct Costs	31,863	(land charges highways and planning)
2. Overheads	8,884	(land charges highways and planning)
3. External Departments Recharge	18,973	( Health and Building Control )
Sub Total	59,720
Estimated Number of Searches = 1,280
Cost per search	47

Notes:

1. These costs include the Land Charges staff time allocation based on a % pro-rata as arrived at using time recording data. Also included is an element of office running costs such as consumables allocated on the same basis.

2. Overheads include heating, lighting and building insurance costs- also an element of support costs recharge to the Land Charges service as a whole such as IT costs. These costs are allocated on the basis of the time recording data.

3. These are costs charged by External Depts such as Environmental, Health and Building Control/Planning that are directly attributable to the provision of the Raw Data search.

Access to CON29R raw data information without Planning Qu 1.1 (a) to (e) Highways Qu2 (a) and Health Qu 3.12 (a) and (b) (ii) (public register information) has been assessed by deducting the officer time in answering these questions (Highways £2 Planning £5 and Health £2) Total cost £38

Is the Property in our area?

If you are not sure if a property is in our area, please telephone us for confirmation on 01978 292021.

Other Local Authorities whose boundaries adjoin ours are:

Denbighshire County Council
Tel: 01824 706379

Flintshire County Council
Tel: 01352 702335

Chester City Council
Tel: 01244 402585

Oswestry Borough Council
Tel: 01691 671111

Powys County Council
Tel 01597 826000

Drainage Searches

Drainage enquiries are dealt with by Welsh Water PO Box 10 Treharris CF46 6XZ. Tel 01443 331155.

Enquiries and Comments

If you would like further information on Local Land Charges please contact 01978 292021 or Email: landcharges@wrexham.gov.uk

Documents

Search Request Form

The form is available to download in the following formats:

Search Request Form - Word format 47Kb

Search Request Form - PDF format 18Kb

Search Request Form - Plain Text format 104Kb

Refresher Search Request Form

The form is available to download in the following formats:

Refresher Search Request Form - Word format 32Kb

Refresher Search Request Form - PDF format 15Kb

Refresher Search Request Form - Plain Text format 60Kb

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