The City of London is the latest area to have its Local Land Charges (LLC) data added to the Land Registry’s central database.

Anyone requiring LLC searches for the Square Mile will need to get them from HM Land Registry rather than going directly to the City of London Corporation.

The City of London Corporation follows Liverpool City Council and Warwick District Council in joining the central service which launched in July 2018 and is slowly migrating to other local authorities.

Allison Bradbury, head of the Local Land Charges Programme at the Land Registry, said: “The City of London has one of the most dynamic business property markets in the world.

“By making their local land charges information instantly accessible via HM Land Registry’s central digital register, we are ensuring that customers can access essential information about property transactions instantly, saving both time and money.”

Richard Steele, corporate spatial data manager at the City of London Corporation, added: “While there are relatively few residents in the Square Mile, we have around 500,000 workers.

“This means a lot of buildings in a small area and around 23,000 local land charges relating to those buildings. Previously, our local land charges data was held in a mixture of paper and digital systems.

“Before migrating all the information to HM Land Registry’s digital register, we have digitised and accuracy-checked all the data. This helps to reduce business risk for future property transactions in the area.

“By taking part in the process, the turnaround times for local land charges search results for properties in the City will be reduced from days to seconds.”