First council collects grant to buy IT for land search

Slough Borough Council is the first to receive government cash targeted at coaxing local authorities towards paperless offices and a speedier system of land searches.

The council will benefit from 1.1 million awarded by the local authority modernisation programme (LAMP), which will go towards implementing the National Land Information Service (NLIS).

LAMP is set to distribute 205 million in total to local authorities across the country, who can use it to buy the required IT and then pay it back over time.

The programme was set up by Local Government Information House in a bid to make the provision of land and property information by councils more efficient, and to support and promote NLIS.

All local authorities are signed up to NLIS, which builds their capability in three stages.

LAMP funding is targeted at getting councils to level three, which means they are able to store all front-end and back-end records electronically.

Slough receives 4,000 applications a year from law firms, taking around ten days to process each one.

Council assistant chief executive Liz Terry said that by moving towards a paperless process, the council could drastically reduce the stress of house-buying and help to eliminate gazumping.

'This will speed up house buying by reducing the process from days to minutes,' she said.

'The service that we are able to provide for solicitors and estate agents will be greatly improved by having a single, electronic point of access.'

Launching the project, e-commerce minister Douglas Alexander commended the move, saying he knew how arduous property searches could be from his experience as a trainee solicitor in Scotland.

Paula Rohan