Conduct and service

The ins and outs of local searches

Just what a solicitor should tell his client about what can - and cannot - be discovered from a local search has always been a vexed question.

However, it is something to which practitioners should pay increased attention because complaints related to local searches seem to be increasing.

Some of them are plainly unfair.

For example, one client complained that his solicitor did not warn him that there was an electricity sub-station at the bottom of his garden, when it was there and plain to see.

Assuming the client had visited the property, he could not have missed it.

However, others aren't quite so obvious.

Even if the subsequent complaint is unjustified, it's still a complaint that has to be dealt with - and that takes time.

In one case, the clients were buying a house on a new development.

Their plot abutted onto vacant land.

Shortly after the clients moved in to their new house, work began on the vacant land to erect high-density housing association accommodation.

It appeared that the firm had been instructed in January and the solicitors had immediately put in hand the local search.

Planning consent for the adjacent land had been granted in May, before the clients exchanged contracts for their purchase in July, with completion a month later.

The purchasers complained that the search was out-of-date by the time contracts were exchanged and that had a new search been done, it would have revealed the permission granted in May and they would then have withdrawn.

The solicitors' response was that they had written to their clients in April, advising them what a local search would and would not reveal, and telling them that the local search covered only proposals within 200 metres of the property.

If they had any concerns about what was revealed or about open land near the property, the solicitors warned, they should make their own enquiries of the local authority.

The clients had not done this, and had not asked the solicitors to do so either.

This particular complaint was found, on the facts, to be unjustified.

However, it amply illustrates both a trend in complaints to the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors and the desirability of solicitors ensuring that clients understand precisely what a local search can show.

This can save hours trying to convince, usually unsuccessfully, a disgruntled client that his complaints are unjustified.

Far better to prevent the complaint arising in the first place.

Every case before the adjudication panel is decided on its individual facts.

These case studies are for illustration only and should not be treated as precedents