Pre-Contract Searches and Enquiries Flashcards
What is a Report on Title (the “Report”)?
A report on the legal aspects of a Property, as informed by the Solicitor’s investigations, searches, and enquiries.
The Report will summrise the facts concerning the Property, any issues, their implications, and the available solutions. It will also explain how the Solicitor acquired all this informiton and the limits to their liability.
What are the Three Types of Searches?
Standard Searches:
- Local Searches.
- Drainage and Water Enquiries.
- Desktop Environmental Search.
- Chancel Repair Liability Search.
Circumstantial Searches:
- Land Charges Search.
- Index Map Search.
- Companies Search.
Optional Searches:
- Enhanced Local Searches (CON29O).
- Highways Search.
- Mining Searches (Coal, Salt, and Tin, Clay and Limestone).
- Enhanced Environmental Search (Phase I & II Surveys, Flood).
- Miscellaneous Searches (Utility, Rail, Waterways).
What is a Local Search?
- Enquiries of the Local Authority (Form CON29), which reveal information about the property and its immediate surroundings; and
- Searches of the Local Land Charges (Form LLC1).
Ordinary Enquiries concern such things as: planning permissions, refusals, and completion notices; building regulations; roads and public rights of way; and environmental notices.
Enhanced Enquiries concern: the existence of common land; town or village green; road proposals by private bodies; areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks; pipelines; and noise abatement zones.
Searches reveal such things as: granted planning permissions subject to conditions; planning enforcement or stop notices; tree preservation orders; smoke control orders; various charges; conservation areas; and listed building status.
What is a Drainage and Water Enquiry?
What is a Desktop Environmental Search?
Why is it important to always do a Highway Search in the Local Search?
It precisely demarcates the boundaries between the Property, or its rights of way, and abutting or surrounding highways.
What is a Chancel Repair Liability Search?
A search for whether the Tenement is liable to contribute to Church repairs.
What is an Index Map Search?
What are the Standard Forms for Residential Pre-Contract Enquiries?
- The Property Information Form (TA6): Details information on all aspects of the Property and its immediate surroundings.
- The Leasehold Information Form (TA7): Used when the Property is on a Long Lease.
- The New Home Information Form (TA7): Used when the Property is newly built.
- The Fittings and Contents Form (TA10): Details items that included in and excluded from the Sale.
Enquiries rely on the Seller being cooperative and truthful. They may decline to cooperate, partly or wholly, if they have no knowledge of the Property or to avoid unintentionally misleading the Buyer.
What are the Standard Forms for Commercial Pre-Contract Enquiries?
-
CPSE1 (Mandatory):
- VAT.
- Contents.
- Physical condition.
- Utilities and services.
- Notices and disputes.
- Access to the Property.
- Occupiers and employees.
- Planning and building regulations.
- Extent of and responsibility for boundaries.
- Rights benefiting and burdening the Property.
- CPSE2: Applies when the Property is subject to commercial tenancies.
- CPSE3: Applies on the grant of a new Lease.
- CPSE4-6: Apply to specific circumstances.
Beyond the Starndard Forms, can the Buyer’s Solicitor raise Further Enquiries?
- In Commercial Transactions, they can raise as many as they wish, but the Seller’s Solicitor may choose not to answer every one.
- In Residential Transactions, they should only do so to clarify issues arising out of provided documents or their investigations.
When is Planning Permission necessary?
Whenever there is a Development on Land, excluding:
- Works that only affect a building’s interior;
- Works that do not materially affect the building’s external appearance; or
- Changes of use that are within the same use class.
Town and Country Planning Act 1990 — s. 55.
A Development may also obviate permission if it falls within the exceptions in the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 2015 (the “GPDO”).
However, because Local Authorities can disapply the GPDO, an equiry should be made during the Local Search.
What is a Development?
The carrying out of certain building works on Land or a material change of use of the Land.
What are the Classes of Use?
- Class A1, Shops.
- Class A2, Financial and Professional Services.
- Class A3, Food and Drink.
- Class B1, Business.
- Class B2, General Industrial.
- Class B3-7, Special Industrial.
- Class B8, Storage and Distribution.
- Class C1, Hotels.
- Class C2, Residential Institutions.
- Class C2A, Secure Residential Institutions.
- Class C3, Dwellinghouses Used as Main Residences.
- Class C4, Houses in Multiple Occupation.
- Class C5, Dwellinghouses Not Used as Main Residences.
- Class C6, Short-Term Lets.
- Class D1, Non-Residential Institutions.
- Class D2, Assembly and Leisure.
- Class E, Commercial, Business, and Service.
- Class F1, Learning and Non-Residential Institutions.
- Class F2, Local Community.
Any use that falls outside the classes will be treated as Sui Generis, i.e. a Use Class of its own.
What is a Listed Building?
A building of special architectural or historic interest, of which there are three Grades:
- Grade I: Buildings of exceptional interest.
- Grade II: Particularly important buildings of more than special interest.
- Grade III: Buildings of special interest.
Listed Building Consent is required to demolish, alter, extend, or otherwise perform any Work on a Listed Building.
