Building a Chase Process That Catches Late Searches Before the Solicitor Does

Most firms find out a search is late the same way: the solicitor calls.

By then it's too late to look good. The search is overdue, you didn't know, and the first thing you have to do is apologise and go and find out what happened. You're behind before you've started.

The firms that never get caught this way aren't luckier with councils. They just chase differently. They know an order is at risk before anyone else does, because their process tells them.

Why is reactive chasing the wrong way round?

Reactive chasing means the trigger to act comes from outside your firm — almost always the solicitor asking where their search is. By the time that call lands, the search is already late, you're already behind, and your first move is an apology rather than an update.

The problem is the position it puts you in. You don't know the order's status, so you can't answer the question. You have to break off, go and check, maybe chase the council, then call back. Every one of those steps happens while the solicitor is already annoyed.

It also scales badly. One late order is a phone call. Twenty orders sitting quietly past their return date is a queue of phone calls you haven't had yet — and you won't see them coming. Reactive firms are always managing yesterday's problem.

How do you set an expected return date per council?

You set it from real data for that specific council, not a blanket figure. If a council has been returning in four working days for the last three months, four days is the expected date. The order is "due" when that date arrives and "overdue" the moment it passes.

This only works per council. There are over 300 local authorities in England and Wales, each moving at its own pace — a quiet district might come back in two days while a backlogged metropolitan council runs to five or six weeks. A single average across all of them is useless. It flags fast councils as late and lets slow ones run on unnoticed.

So the date has to come from that council's own recent behaviour. Official search times are council-set and range from roughly two working days to six weeks. As a personal search firm you bypass most of that queue and typically return in 24 to 72 hours, but your expected dates still need to reflect where each request actually sits.

The data builds itself if you let it. Every search you complete records how long that council took. Feed that back in, and your expected return dates get sharper over time instead of staying frozen at a guess you made years ago.

What does a daily due and overdue view do?

A daily due/overdue view is the single screen that tells you what to chase today. It lists every open order against its expected return date and sorts them: approaching, due today, overdue. You open it each morning and you know exactly where to spend the next hour.

This is the part that replaces memory. In most firms, knowing what's late lives in one person's head — and it works until that person is off, or volume jumps, or they're simply having a busy week. The view doesn't have busy weeks. Nothing falls through because nobody remembered to look.

It also changes the rhythm of the day. Instead of reacting to whatever call comes in, you start with the list. You clear the overdue items, you get ahead of the ones due today, and the orders approaching their date are already on your radar. The work comes to you in order of urgency, not in order of who shouts loudest.

What should your escalation steps be?

Escalation is the ladder you climb when a chase doesn't land. The first chase is gentle and early, sent as the order approaches its date. If that gets no response, the next contact is firmer and goes higher — a named contact at the council, a different channel, a note that you'll escalate further. Each step is recorded so you know where you are.

The point of fixed steps is consistency. Without them, chasing depends on who's handling the order and what mood they're in. Some people chase too softly and get ignored; others go in hard on day one and burn the relationship. A defined ladder means every order gets chased the same sensible way, regardless of who's at the desk.

Record every step against the order. When the solicitor does call, you can tell them precisely what's happened: chased on Tuesday, escalated to the named officer Thursday, response promised by Friday. That's a firm in control, not a firm guessing.

"The solicitors I worked with could live with a slow council. What they couldn't live with was silence. The firms that called first — 'this one's running behind, here's what we're doing about it' — kept the work even when the search was genuinely late. The ones who waited to be chased lost the relationship over a delay that was never really their fault."

— Valerie Bennett, Personal Search Veteran · June 2026

Why does communicating early protect the relationship?

Because the solicitor's real problem isn't the delay — it's not knowing. A search running a few days behind a busy council is rarely the thing that loses you the account. Being unable to say where it is, when asked, is. Tell them first, with a reason and a new expected date, and a late search becomes a managed one.

Early communication only works if you spot the problem early, which is the whole point of the process. The due/overdue view tells you an order is slipping before the solicitor knows. That gives you the chance to send the message they'd otherwise have had to prise out of you: "Wrexham's running long this week, we've chased and escalated, expect it Monday."

That single message does more for the relationship than any clean turnaround. It tells the solicitor you're watching their order, not just processing it. The firms that do this don't lose work to a delay. The ones that wait to be asked often do.

Key takeaways

• Reactive chasing puts you behind: you find out a search is late when the solicitor calls, and your first move is an apology.
• Proactive chasing sets an expected return date per council, from real data, and flags the order before the deadline passes.
• A daily due/overdue view replaces one person's memory with a screen that never has an off day.
• Fixed escalation steps make chasing consistent and give you a clear record when the solicitor asks.
• Communicating early turns a late search into a managed one — and that's what protects the relationship.

Chasing well isn't about chasing harder. It's about knowing first.

Set an honest expected return date per council, look at one due/overdue list every morning, escalate in fixed steps, and tell the solicitor before they tell you. Do that and the late-search phone call mostly stops happening — and when it does come, you already have the answer.

That's the difference between a firm that runs on memory and hope and one that runs on a process. The process doesn't get tired, doesn't go on holiday, and doesn't forget the awkward council that always runs long.

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