If you're running a personal search company, you already know what a CON29 is. You know what an LLC1 is. You've processed hundreds of them.
What you might find useful is a clear picture of where the errors happen — and why the LLC1 is changing faster than most firms realise.
The CON29: what it covers and where it causes problems
The CON29 is the set of standard enquiries that goes to the local authority. The answers cover planning history, road adoption, drainage, contaminated land, radon risk, compulsory purchase — everything the council knows about the property and its surroundings that a buyer needs to know before they commit.
It comes in two parts.
CON29R is the required part — officially just the CON29 (Enquiries of a Local Authority) since the 2016 revision, though most of the trade still calls it CON29R. Every search includes it. The answers are based on the council's own records — planning department, highways, environmental health — which is why they take time and why every council is different.
CON29O is the optional part. The solicitor instructs which additional questions they need, based on the specific property. Public rights of way, pipe and cable routes, nearby road proposals that haven't made it into the required questions yet.
The CON29O is where things most often get missed. The solicitor instructs them; your team needs to make sure they're captured on the request and that the council answers all of them. If one comes back blank or unanswered, it needs to be chased — not filed.
The practical reality of CON29 processing
The council answers the CON29 from its own internal records. Different questions go to different departments. Planning answers planning questions. Highways answers highways questions. Not all of them come back at the same time, and not all of them come back complete on the first response.
A good search operation tracks which questions are answered and which need following up — not as a manual check at the end, but as a live status on the order. If a question is blank when the response arrives, that's a chase item, not a reason to sit on the order.
The LLC1: what it covers and what's changing
The LLC1 is a search of the Local Land Charges Register. Where the CON29 is about what the council knows in a general sense, the LLC1 is specifically about formal entries registered against the land itself.
That means: financial charges the council is owed, planning conditions that bind the land rather than just the applicant, listed building status, tree preservation orders, conservation area designations. Things that attach to the property and pass to any future owner.
The migration — and why it matters for your operation
HM Land Registry is migrating Local Land Charges data to a single national register for England and Wales. The programme has been running for several years; as of 2025 around a third of authorities have migrated — 110 of 300-plus, as of March 2025 — with completion targeted for 2028.
Once a council has migrated, the LLC1 result is available online in seconds via the national register — free as a search result, or £15 for the official certificate that carries HM Land Registry's guarantee. You put in the location and it comes straight back.
For councils that haven't migrated — still the majority — you're requesting the LLC1 from the council directly, paying their fee, and waiting for their response.
The practical impact for a search firm is significant. If you're still treating every LLC1 as a manual council request, you're adding unnecessary time and cost to every search in a migrated area. Knowing which councils have migrated and automatically routing the LLC1 request accordingly is a basic operational efficiency that not every firm has caught up with yet.
A quick way to check: if you're paying a council fee for the LLC1 and the council has been on the national register for two years, something in your process hasn't updated.
The comparison that matters for your operation
| CON29 | LLC1 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Planning, roads, drainage, local notices | Formal entries registered against the land |
| Who provides it | Council departments | Council (pre-migration) or HM Land Registry national register (post-migration) |
| Turnaround | Depends entirely on the council | Instant for migrated councils |
| Where errors happen | Incomplete answers, missed CON29O questions | Using the wrong route for migrated councils |
| Fee | Council-set, per search | Free result or £15 official certificate (migrated) / council fee (not yet) |
The thing most firms don't think about enough
When a CON29 comes back from a council, someone needs to check it properly. Not just that it arrived — that the answers are complete, that optional enquiries have been answered, that nothing has been left blank that shouldn't be.
In a busy week, that check is the thing that gets rushed. Or the thing that relies on whoever happens to open the email noticing that something looks wrong.
The firms that get it consistently right have a structured review step built into the process — not a mental checklist, but an actual gate before a report moves forward.
"I've seen reports go out with blank CON29 answers. Not because anyone was careless — because at volume, a blank field in an email is easy to miss if you're not specifically looking for it. Once the report's with the solicitor it's your problem. That kind of mistake is entirely avoidable with the right process."
— Valerie Bennett, Personal Search Veteran · June 2026
Valio tracks LLC1 migration status per council and routes requests automatically. CON29 responses are reviewed against the expected question set before the order moves to report stage.
How Valio handles council data → · The order-to-invoice workflow → · Valio features → · Conveyancing searches explained →