How property searches work
When you buy a home in England or Wales, traditionally your property lawyer orders a set of searches against the property. They reveal risks the seller may not have disclosed: planning history, flooding, contaminated land, drainage and water connections, mining activity, and more. This is why it is vital that you get to see the answers as soon as possible and why we enable home buyers to get their searches underway with us directly.
The three core searches
Almost every residential purchase needs these three:
- Local Authority Search — planning, building control, road schemes, conservation, enforcement notices.
- Drainage & Water Search — where the property's sewers and water mains run, and whether the home is connected to the public network.
- Environmental Report — flood, ground stability, radon, contaminated land, and other risks at the address.
When you also need a CON29M Mining Report
Where the property sits on a historic coalfield, your lender will require a CON29M Mining Report on top of the standard set. The Groundsure Avista bundle includes the CON29M as part of the environmental product, which works out cheaper than ordering them separately.
Regulated vs official searches
Most major UK lenders accept regulated searches — these are commercially produced reports backed by professional indemnity insurance and the Search Code. A small number of lenders only accept official searches issued directly by the local authority. Our lender checker tells you which applies.
How long it takes
Drainage & Water reports can take between 4 and 11 working days, whilst environmental reports can return within a matter of hours. The local authority search is the slowest piece as not all councils have gone digital and we still need to separately apply for building control data. This means that the timescales vary from a few days to several weeks. We show typical turnaround times for local searches across all council areas so that you and your property lawyer have a clear understanding of the timelines.
Turnaround times vary by council
Local authority turnaround is the single biggest variable in a search order. We track live figures for every council we cover — see current timescales, delay reasons and the regulated alternative on our council coverage hub. Popular pages: Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol.
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