If you run a personal search company, the LLC1 used to be simple: request it from the council, pay their fee, wait. That's still true for most of England and Wales. But for a growing minority of areas, it isn't, and the difference shows up in your time and your costs.
This is the migration that's quietly changing one half of the local search. Here's where it stands, and what it actually means for the work.
What is the HMLR LLC1 migration?
HM Land Registry is building one national Local Land Charges register for England and Wales, moving the data off individual councils. As of 2025, around a third of authorities have migrated — 110 of 300-plus as of March 2025, carrying 6.5 million instantly available records — with completion targeted for 2028 (26 million-plus records by then). In a migrated area the LLC1 is available online instantly.
That's the headline. The detail matters more for your operation.
Before migration, every council held its own Local Land Charges Register and answered LLC1 requests in its own way, at its own pace, for its own fee. The national register consolidates all of that into one searchable system at HM Land Registry's national register. HMLR has been migrating councils in waves for several years. Their own progress write-up, Local Land Charges: the journey so far, sets out how far along the programme is and where it's heading.
One thing to be clear about: this is roughly a third of authorities, not most of them. Plenty of firms assume the migration is nearly done. It isn't.
What changes in a migrated area, and what doesn't?
In a migrated area, the LLC1 comes from the national register, not the council. The result is available online instantly — free as a search result, or £15 for the official certificate that carries HMLR's guarantee. What does not change: the CON29 still comes from the council, exactly as before.
This is the point firms most often get wrong, so it's worth slowing down on.
The national register holds the LLC1 only — the local land charges. It does not hold the CON29. The CON29 answers planning history, road adoption, drainage, contaminated land and the rest, and those answers still come from the council's own departments. The migration consolidates half of the local search. The other half is untouched.
So a migrated council doesn't mean a faster search overall — it means a faster, cheaper LLC1. The CON29 wait still sets the pace of the whole job. Treating "this council has migrated" as "this search is now instant" is how firms set the wrong expectations with conveyancers.
There's also a cost trap here. If a council has migrated, you should not be paying a council LLC1 fee. The search result is free; the certificate is £15 to HMLR. I've seen firms keep paying an old council LLC1 charge for a year after the area went onto the national register, simply because nobody updated the process. That's pure margin leaking out, search by search.
Migrated council vs not yet migrated: how to route the LLC1
In a migrated area you get the LLC1 from the national register, instantly, free or £15 for the guaranteed certificate. In an area that hasn't migrated, you request it from the council and pay the council's fee, at the council's speed. Routing each LLC1 to the right place is the whole operational job.
The table below is the version I'd pin above a processor's desk.
| Migrated council | Not yet migrated | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you get the LLC1 | HM Land Registry national register (online) | The council, direct request |
| Speed | Instant result online | Council's own turnaround |
| Cost | Free result, or £15 for the official guaranteed certificate | Council's LLC1 fee |
| What you must NOT do | Pay a council LLC1 fee; expect it to include the CON29 | Assume the national register has it yet |
Two columns, four rows, and most LLC1 mistakes live in the bottom one. Pay attention to the "must not do" line.
How do you keep track of each council's status?
You check HM Land Registry's national register: if an area returns an instant LLC1 result, it's migrated; if it doesn't, request from the council. Around a third of authorities have migrated as of 2025, and the list keeps growing toward the 2028 target, so status is a moving target, not a fact you learn once.
That's the catch. A council's status can change between one search and the next, and nobody sends you a memo when it does.
Most firms handle this in one of two ways, and both have a failure mode. Some learn the migrated councils by memory — which works until the person who knows leaves, or until volume jumps and the list goes stale. Others check the register fresh every time, which is reliable but slow when you're routing hundreds of LLC1s a week.
What I've found works is treating migration status as live council data — a property of the council, kept current, that the order routes against automatically. Then the question "has this one migrated?" gets answered for you on every order, not re-litigated by hand. That's the same problem as every other council quirk, which is why we treat it as part of the council knowledge problem.
If you want the deeper split of what the LLC1 covers versus the CON29 it's so easily confused with, that's worth a read too: CON29 vs LLC1.
"The migration is genuinely good news — a free, instant, guaranteed LLC1 is a better product. The trap is operational. I've watched firms either ignore it entirely and overpay councils, or assume it's finished and tell a solicitor the search is instant when only half of it is. Get the routing right and you bank the saving without the embarrassment."
— Valerie Bennett, Personal Search Veteran · June 2026
What's the takeaway for a search firm right now?
Route every LLC1 by the council's current migration status: national register for migrated areas, council for the rest. Around a third have migrated as of 2025, heading for 2028, so the answer changes over time. Don't pay a council fee for a migrated area, and don't mistake the LLC1 for the whole local search.
The migration isn't a threat to your business, and it isn't a finished story either. It's a steadily moving line that quietly rewards firms with current council data and quietly taxes those running on memory. The LLC1 gets cheaper and faster as each council crosses over. The CON29 stays exactly as demanding as it always was.
Keep the routing right and the status current, and the migration only ever works in your favour.
See how council data works in Valio → · CON29 vs LLC1 → · The council knowledge problem →