George Osbourne’s pledge of £2 billion to the housing budget to deliver 400,000 affordable homes by 2020 is welcome news for aspiring homeowners and the property industry. However, Maud Rousseau, Marketing and Communications Director of SearchFlow, conveyancing search provider, stresses the importance of conveyancers carrying out comprehensive and the most up-to-date planning searches to protect themselves and their clients.
The Government’s biggest affordable house building programme since the 1970s will have a very real impact. This announcement follows recent figures released revealing a record level of new homes being built over the past year, with a 25% annual increase setting the highest percentage increase in a generation.
In addition to the increased funding outlined in the Spending Review, the Government has already put in place a number of initiatives to boost house building. These include the neighbourhood planning scheme which put planning powers in the hands of people, first time buyer schemes, planning in principle initiatives and the Government’s productivity plan whereby brownfield sites are to get automatic planning permission.
The landscape in Local Authority planning departments is changing fast. The challenge for the conveyancing search industry is to ensure we remain one step ahead of the game, compiling reports that are the most comprehensive and up to date.
With local authority searches restricted to planning applications on the property itself, with the exception for road and rail and limited land-use designations, it is clear that it is now more important than ever to address comprehensive planning in your search to avoid any potential risk for both you and the homebuyer.
At SearchFlow, we offer Plansearch Plus, which will include the latest planning applications and land use designation within a wide radius of the property. It also contains more general issues on the neighbourhoods such as rights of way, local schools and amenities, to give conveyancers and homebuyers the added security of a complete and comprehensive report.
This article was submitted to be published by SearchFlow as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
