Property Searches Policy

Important Notice - April 2022 The Town Hall has now re-opened to members of the public. From the 6th June 2022 we are reverting back to the appointment based system, therefore personal…

Important Notice - April 2022

The Town Hall has now re-opened to members of the public.

From the 6th June 2022 we are reverting back to the appointment based system, therefore personal searches can only be conducted by visiting the Town Hall to view the Local Land Charges Register and records in person.

To request a personal search appointment please email personalsearches@barrowbc.gov.uk for availability.

From the 30th May 2022 we will not accept requests for emailed data.

Please contact personalsearches@barrowbc.gov.uk for more information.

Important Statement (Reviewed April 2022)

Environmental Information Requests to send compiled information on Local Land Charges and CON29 questions to requestors is diverting a disproportionate level of resources away from the Council’s other statutory and paid for functions.

As the requests involve the answering of multiple questions and the compilation, refinement and interpretation of a new dataset for each request and not just the provision of raw data, each one is taking on average 35 minutes of officer time to process. This equates to around 240 hours per year at current levels, which in a small team in a council of Barrow’s size diverts staff resources that are already stretched.

The Council therefore have decided as of the 1st January 2017 to only make the raw data available to view on inspection at their offices, this will be reviewed on an annual basis to see if it is still appropriate. A internal review was carried out in April 2022 and it was decided that the situation had not changed and the existing procedure would remain for another year.

The inspection of the data will be free and can be organised by requesting an appointment through personalsearches@barrowbc.gov.uk.

A fee of £17.00 applies for verification of information not supplied by Local Authority.

Within your appointment request you must provide details of all addresses you will be searching during your appointment. Requests must be accompanied by a plan for each address, which clearly identifies the land/property edged in red.

Appointments will be made by agreement on a first come first served basis with at least 5 working days’ notice, on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in 1 hour slots, 10am, 11am, 2pm and 3pm.

Please note an appointment slot of 1 hour does not guarantee you 1 hour access viewing our data, it takes time to escort visitors to and from the room, so please take this into account when requesting an appointment. We can also not extend appointments past 12pm and 4pm as staff cover is not available to ensure visitors are escorted safely out of the building.

"The Council's policy on Property Searches has always been to ensure that we provide an efficient and responsive service for Property Searches falling under auspices of The Local Authorities (England) (Charges for Property Searches) Regulations 2008.

The policy does not cover requests made under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, as these are not dealt with by the Land Charges section and a separate policy applies to these requests. To ensure the Council encourages regeneration and growth within Barrow it is important that the council can service requests for Property Searches as efficiently and as responsively as possible.

To this end the Land Charges section are charged with concentrating their resources on maintaining the data held, responding to official searches submitted to the Council this is then balanced against responding to Environmental Information Requests.

The Council provide an online service for requesting official searches that enables users of the service to apply for official searches quickly and easily. We also try to return responses electronically in order to ensure as fast as possible turnaround."

If you are requesting to view the information only then you will be offered an appointment to do this within the 20 working days. EIR requests are processed in an sequential order with all other requests received for Council Information. Consequently requests will take longer to process than official searches.

EIR average response time is 15 working days. More information on requests under the Environmental Information Regulations and Freedom of Information can be found on the Data Protection and Freedom of Information page.