Solicitors and conveyancers in Ealing and Harrow will benefit from faster and cheaper land searches following Council improvements to local land charge services.

Thanks to Ealing and Harrow Councils' combined commitment to e-government and a government-backed initiative called the National Land Information Service (NLIS), solicitors and home movers can expect one of the fastest and highest quality local land charge services in the country.

Most Ealing Council searches are turned around within four working days, well within the national target of ten working days. Electronic searches will result in significant efficiency savings, which both Councils will pass on to solicitors and home movers by making the searches cheaper than traditional paper-based searches.  Traditionally, search requests have been submitted and returned by post or document exchange. Also, solicitors will no longer need to generate cheques for each service, since payment is on-line.

Senior Local Land Charges Officer at Ealing Council, Mr Pat Morgan, said:  �Local people want the fastest search service when they move home.  They also want the most certain option by getting accurate, official results direct from the local authority. NLIS is the official national one-stop shop for land and property information.  With NLIS, local home movers don't need to choose between speed and accuracy, they can have both. NLIS allows solicitors to offer their clients fully guaranteed and comprehensive information, which in turn promotes peace of mind for potential home owners."

Local solicitors, who often deal with home movers that cross local authority borders, will no longer need to contact each local authority separately for search and fee requests.  At the press of a button, they can submit their search through NLIS and it sends the search to the correct local authority.  The local authority can then automatically return the search to the solicitor's desktop with the correct search fees.

The Improvement and Development agency reports that since its launch in February 2001, NLIS now has approximately a 30 per cent share of the search market. More than half of councils already use the service. The rejection rate for searches is historically 10 per cent, but through NLIS this has dropped to just one per cent, as solicitors now have all the correct information they need online when requesting searches.

The big question now is whether local solicitors can let go of their quill pens and use technology to become more effective in many other ways.