Conveyancing Searches Explained: Every Search, 2026 Costs and Timescales

Conveyancing searches are legal enquiries your solicitor sends to public bodies — the local council, the water company, environmental data providers and others — once your offer on a property is accepted. They uncover things no viewing or survey can see: planning breaches, road schemes, sewers under the kitchen extension, contaminated land, mine shafts in the garden. If you're buying with a mortgage your lender will insist on them, a standard pack costs roughly £250–£450 in 2026, and the slowest search usually sets the pace of your entire purchase.

This guide decodes every search you'll see on a conveyancing quote — what it reveals, what it costs from primary 2026 sources, and how long it really takes. It also covers the change most guides still miss: HM Land Registry's Local Land Charges migration, which has made part of the local search instant and £15 at migrated councils. And because almost every paid search is built from public datasets, we'll show you how to preview most of the risks yourself, free, before you instruct a solicitor.

Add it up and a typical residential search pack lands between £250 and £450, depending mostly on which council and water company serve the property. These are disbursements — costs your conveyancer passes on, separate from their legal fee — which is why two quotes for the same house can show different search totals.

What are conveyancing searches — and why your lender insists on them

Searches are formal enquiries about the property and the land it sits on, addressed to the bodies that hold official records: the local authority, the water and sewerage company, environmental data firms and the Mining Remediation Authority. Your conveyancer orders them shortly after your offer is accepted, and the results feed into their report on title — the document that tells you (and your lender) what you're actually buying.

If you're borrowing, searches aren't optional. The UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook requires your solicitor to carry out the usual searches before completion, because a hidden enforcement notice or contaminated-land designation directly affects the value of the lender's security. Cash buyers can legally skip searches — more on whether you should later in this guide.

Crucially, searches reveal a different category of problem from a survey. A RICS surveyor inspects the physical building; searches inspect the paperwork and the land. Things only searches catch include:

• Extensions or conversions with no building regulations sign-off
• A proposed road or rail scheme close to the property
• A public sewer running under the footprint of the house or an extension
• Contaminated land designations from former industrial use
• Mine entries or shallow coal workings beneath or near the plot
• Financial charges, planning conditions and section 106 agreements that bind whoever owns the property

Local authority search (LLC1 + CON29)

The local authority search is the big one — the most revealing, usually the most expensive, and almost always the slowest. It's actually two documents bought together.

What the LLC1 reveals

The LLC1 is an official search of the local land charges register: restrictions and obligations that bind the property whoever owns it. Expect entries for:

• Conservation area designations and listed building status
• Tree preservation orders (TPOs)
• Smoke control zones
• Planning agreements and section 106 obligations
• Financial charges, such as repayable improvement grants

What the CON29 covers

The CON29 is a questionnaire answered by the council about the property and its immediate surroundings: planning permissions granted and refused, building regulations approvals and breaches, road adoption status, proposed road and rail schemes, outstanding statutory notices, compulsory purchase orders, contaminated land entries and radon designation. If the property fronts a private road or sits near pipelines or commons, your conveyancer can bolt on the optional CON29O for extra questions.

The 2026 change nobody mentions

HM Land Registry has been migrating councils' local land charges registers onto a single national digital register — and at migrated councils the LLC1 element is now instant. You can run an official search for £15, or a free personal search, through the GOV.UK local land charges service. Once a council migrates it stops issuing its own LLC1s entirely (several ceased in January 2026). The CON29 still goes to the council, so the migration doesn't kill the delay problem — but it removes one chunk of it, and most guides haven't caught up.

Cost and turnaround

Council fees vary several-fold. Real 2026 examples from council fee pages: one authority charges £29 for the LLC1 plus £79.50 including VAT for the CON29; another charges £56.50 plus £189 for the same pair. The government target for returning local searches is 10 working days, but real performance ranges from 48 hours to far worse: August 2025 data compiled by HomeOwners Alliance, citing Property Searches Direct, put St Helens at 45 working days, with Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole and Breckland at 40.

Official vs personal searches

Where a council is slow, search agencies sell personal (also called regulated) local searches for around £75–£120, compiled by a researcher inspecting council records rather than the council answering formally. They're usually faster, but not every lender accepts them — your conveyancer must check the lender's handbook entry before relying on one.

Drainage and water search (CON29DW)

The CON29DW is answered by the water and sewerage company. It confirms whether the property is connected to mains water and to a public sewer for foul and surface water, whether the supply is metered, and — the part that bites — where the public sewers actually run. If a public sewer passes under the house or an extension, the water company has rights of access and any past or future building over it needs a build-over agreement.

Pricing is set by each water company, so the cost depends entirely on where you're buying. Published 2026 residential CON29DW prices: Northumbrian Water £60.00, United Utilities £64.96, Southern Water £67.26, Thames Water £75.60, and Anglian Water and Severn Trent both £79.20. Turnaround is typically 5–10 working days and often quicker, as most companies have automated the product. Cheaper regulated drainage searches exist, but lenders and insurers prefer the official CON29DW because the water company stands behind the answers.

Environmental search

The environmental search is a desktop report, usually from Groundsure or Landmark, costing £35–£60. It screens the land against national datasets: contaminated land risk from current and former industrial uses, proximity to landfill, radon-affected areas, ground stability and subsidence indicators, and a flood risk rating.

The result that matters is the contaminated land assessment under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. If land is formally designated as contaminated and the original polluter can't be found, remediation liability can pass to the current owner — which after completion means you. A 'further action' or 'failed' environmental result is the trigger to escalate to a Phase 1 environmental report before exchanging, not after.

Worth knowing: this is a screening product compiled from public datasets — British Geological Survey ground data, Environment Agency flood and landfill records, UKHSA radon maps — not a site visit. The same sources sit behind a radon check or a ground stability check you can run yourself, which is why previewing them early (covered below) so often predicts what the paid search will say.

Coal mining search (CON29M)

About 7 million properties in England, Scotland and Wales lie within coalfield boundaries — roughly 1 in 4 British properties — and around 1.5 million sit directly above coal workings at depths of 30 metres or less, with at least 172,000 recorded mine entries, according to the Mining Remediation Authority and Groundsure. If the property is in a coalfield area, the CON29M coal mining search is effectively compulsory for mortgage purposes.

The Coal Authority now operates as the Mining Remediation Authority, and its published 2026 price for a residential CON29M is £50 with a customer-drawn boundary (£60 if the Authority draws it). The report covers recorded mine entries, shallow workings, past subsidence damage claims and mine gas — and where a mine entry lies within 20 metres of the boundary, it includes a free Mine Entry Interpretive Report worth around £150. Before you offer, you can check the Authority's free interactive coalfield map to see whether a property is in a reporting area at all. Mining isn't only coal: Cornish tin, Cheshire brine and clay extraction areas have their own equivalent searches, and our guide to subsidence when buying a house covers what to do if ground movement shows up.

Chancel repair liability search

Chancel repair liability is a medieval hangover: owners of land once attached to a parish rectory can be made to fund repairs to the church chancel. Around 500,000 properties in England and Wales are potentially affected, according to TheAdvisory, and where the liability bites the repair bills can be serious.

Here's the legal nuance most guides skip. Under the Land Registration Act 2002, chancel repair liability ceased to be an overriding interest on 13 October 2013 — but it can still bind a property that hasn't been sold for value since that date, and the Land Registry continues to accept late notices from parochial church councils. In practice, most conveyancers no longer run the £20–£90 screening search; they recommend a one-off indemnity policy at around £20–£30 instead, which is cheaper than the search itself. Reform may finally be coming: Law Commission recommendations on chancel repair are expected during 2026.

Other location-specific searches

Flood risk report

Where the environmental search flags flood risk — or the property is anywhere near a river, the coast or a known surface-water hotspot — your conveyancer may recommend a standalone flood report at £20–£50. You can preview the underlying data free at the Environment Agency's long term flood risk service; our guide on how to check flood risk walks through reading the maps properly, including the surface-water layer most buyers miss.

Commons, canal and infrastructure searches

A commons registration search (often bundled as CON29O question 22) checks whether any part of the land is registered common land or village green — which can sink development plans entirely. Waterside properties may need a canal & river search covering maintenance liabilities for banks and towpaths. And properties near major infrastructure corridors such as HS2 can warrant a specific infrastructure search beyond the CON29's standard road and rail questions.

Pre-completion searches

Two final items appear on every completion statement and confuse everyone. The OS1 priority search freezes the register for 30 working days so nothing can be registered against the title between exchange and completion. The K16 bankruptcy search (£2 per name) confirms to the lender that you aren't bankrupt. Both are routine, both are cheap, neither is optional.

How much do conveyancing searches cost in 2026?

Here's the full itemised picture, from primary sources where they publish prices:

Searches are disbursements, so in theory every conveyancer should charge you the same pass-through cost. In practice some firms mark up the search pack or bundle it into a fixed fee — when comparing conveyancing quotes, ask for searches to be itemised separately from the legal fee so you can see exactly what you're paying for.

How long do searches take — and how to dodge the delay trap

Searches run in parallel, so your wait is set by the slowest one — almost always the local authority search. Typical 2026 turnarounds:

• Local authority search: 48 hours to 40+ working days depending on the council (government target: 10 working days)
• Drainage & water (CON29DW): 5–10 working days, often faster
• Environmental search: 1–10 working days (largely automated)
• Coal mining (CON29M): usually within a few working days
• LLC1 via the migrated HM Land Registry register: instant

For context, the whole conveyancing process typically takes 12–16 weeks, and HomeOwners Alliance data puts the average gap between searches coming back and exchange at around 3 weeks. So a council running at 40+ working days can single-handedly add two months to a purchase — see our breakdown of how long it takes to buy a house for where searches sit in the wider timeline. Three tactics cut the delay:

1. Check the council's live turnaround before you offer — phone the land charges team or check its website, and factor the answer into the timetable you agree with the seller.
2. Instruct your conveyancer and pay for searches the day your offer is accepted. Many buyers wait for the survey first, wasting 2–4 weeks in which the searches could already be running.
3. Ask whether the council has migrated to HM Land Registry's register — if so, the LLC1 is instant for £15, and only the CON29 is left in the council's queue.

Which searches are compulsory? Mortgage vs cash buyer

With a mortgage, the question answers itself: your lender requires, at minimum, the local authority, drainage & water and environmental searches, plus a CON29M in coalfield areas. No searches, no advance.

Cash buyers can skip everything — and then carry the whole risk personally. The halfway house is search indemnity insurance, from around £20, which compensates you for loss caused by a matter a search would have revealed. Be honest about what that is: a payout mechanism, not information. It will not tell you about the planned road, the sewer under the kitchen or the mine shaft by the fence — you find out when the digger arrives. Lender acceptance is patchy too: per HomeOwners Alliance, Skipton Building Society and NatWest have accepted search indemnity insurance, while Halifax, HSBC and Bank of Ireland generally don't.

What you can check yourself before instructing a solicitor

Here's the part competitors never tell you: nearly every paid search is compiled from public datasets you can read today, free or for pennies. Desk research doesn't replace the official searches your lender requires — but running it before you offer means you spot deal-breakers before spending £400+ on searches and legal fees, and you negotiate knowing what the searches will say. Map each search to its free preview:

• Local authority search → the council's planning portal shows every application, refusal and enforcement case (see our planning permission history check), and the GOV.UK local land charges register offers a free personal search at migrated councils
• Environmental and flood → the Environment Agency's free long term flood risk maps (start with a flood risk check) and BGS GeoIndex ground stability data via a mining and subsidence check
• Coal mining → the Mining Remediation Authority's free interactive coalfield map shows whether the property is in a reporting area
• Title, tenure and price history → the title register costs £3 from HM Land Registry, and Land Registry price paid data shows every sold house price on the street
• Energy and area data → the EPC register is free (EPC rating check), and police.uk publishes street-level crime data

You can chase each dataset down separately — or pull them together in one pass. A HouseDossier report aggregates 15+ of these official sources for any address, which is the ten-minute version of the homework above.

What happens if a search reveals a problem? (3 worked examples)

A bad search result is rarely a reason to walk away on the spot. Every problem resolves into one of four moves: negotiate, insure, investigate further, or walk away. Three scenarios conveyancers see constantly:

Example 1: the conservatory with no building regs sign-off

The CON29 shows a conservatory built eight years ago with no building regulations completion certificate. The standard fix is a lack-of-building-regulations indemnity policy, paid for by the seller, at roughly £30–£300 depending on property value — it covers enforcement risk, though not the cost of fixing genuinely defective work. The alternative is retrospective sign-off (regularisation) from the council, which is slower but actually confirms the work is sound. If the structure looks questionable, fold it into your survey conversation and negotiate.

Example 2: the public sewer under the extension

The CON29DW map shows a public sewer running under the kitchen extension. The question becomes: did the extension get a build-over agreement from the water company? If yes, problem solved — get the paperwork. If no, your conveyancer asks the water company to confirm its position; outcomes range from a retrospective agreement to, in the worst case, the company retaining rights to dig through the extension to access its asset. That uncertainty is a legitimate price renegotiation, or a requirement for the seller to obtain the agreement before exchange.

Example 3: the mine entry within 20 metres

The CON29M flags a recorded mine entry within 20 metres of the boundary. Don't panic — the report automatically includes the Mining Remediation Authority's free Mine Entry Interpretive Report, which assesses whether the entry has been treated and what risk it actually poses. Many are capped and benign. If the interpretive report raises concerns, the lender may require further investigation (such as a ground stability report) before approving the loan; that's the point to investigate fully, renegotiate against the cost, or walk away.

Frequently asked questions