Conveyancing searches are the official checks your solicitor orders on a property from public bodies before you exchange contracts. Three are standard on nearly every purchase in England and Wales — the local authority search, the drainage and water search and the environmental search — plus location-specific extras like a coal mining search. Together they typically cost £250–£450 and take two to six weeks.
Searches exist because the seller doesn’t have to volunteer much, and the things that hurt buyers most — a road scheme next door, a home built over a sewer, a mine shaft under the garden — live in public registers, not in the estate agent’s brochure. This guide covers what each search actually reveals, what it costs, how long it takes, and the one thing most buyers get wrong: waiting until after the offer to learn any of it.
What searches are done when buying a house?
Three searches are ordered on almost every purchase, because every mortgage lender requires them. A cash buyer can legally skip them — more on that below — but the risks they cover don’t care how you’re paying.
On top of the standard three, your solicitor adds location-specific searches where the property warrants them: a coal mining search in former mining areas, tin or limestone searches in parts of Cornwall and the West Midlands, a chancel repair liability check near some ancient parishes, and commons registration in rural spots.
- Local authority search (LLC1 + CON29) — planning history and enforcement, road and rail schemes, tree preservation orders, conservation-area status, smoke control zones. Typical cost £70–£250 depending on the council; the big variable in timing.
- Drainage & water search (CON29DW) — whether the property connects to mains water and sewerage, whether a public sewer runs under the building (which restricts extensions), and who owns the pipes. Typically £60–£90.
- Environmental search — contaminated-land risk from past industrial use, flood risk, ground stability and radon, screened around the property. Typically £60–£120.
- Location-specific extras — coal mining (typically £50–£100), chancel repair (£20–£30 screen), tin/limestone/brine where relevant.
Sources: GOV.UK — buying or selling your home · The Coal Authority — mining reports
What the local authority search really tells you
The local authority search is two documents. The LLC1 covers the local land charges register: conditional planning permissions, enforcement notices, tree preservation orders, conservation areas, listed-building status, financial charges. The CON29 answers a standard question set about the wider picture: nearby road schemes, planning applications and refusals at the property, building-regulations sign-offs, contaminated-land entries.
Two things trip buyers up. First, it only covers the property itself — it will not tell you about your neighbour’s extension application or the field behind being sold to a developer; that needs separate monitoring of the planning register. Second, turnaround varies wildly by council — some return in three days, some take six weeks or more. If your purchase is time-sensitive, ask on day one which council it is and what their current turnaround is.
Drainage, water and the sewer under the kitchen
The CON29DW from the water company answers questions with real money attached: is the property connected to mains water and mains sewerage (a private septic tank or treatment plant changes your running costs and responsibilities), is there a water meter, and — the sleeper issue — does a public sewer run within the boundary or under the building itself?
A public sewer under or near the house isn’t a defect, but it comes with strings: you generally need the water company’s agreement to build over or near it, which can constrain that kitchen extension you were pricing up. If the plan is to extend, read this search with the plans in hand.
The environmental search: flood, ground and past lives
The environmental search is a desktop screen of the land’s history and hazards: past industrial uses that could mean contamination (and, in the worst case, remediation liability that attaches to the current owner), river and surface-water flood risk, ground stability including natural subsidence hazards, and radon potential.
It usually comes back as a pass/fail style report with maps. A "further action" result doesn’t kill a purchase — it usually means the search firm recommends a more detailed report or specific insurance. But it’s far better to know the property screens badly before you’re emotionally and financially committed, which is exactly why checking flood and ground risk pre-offer (free, in minutes) beats discovering it in week eight.
Sources: GOV.UK — check long-term flood risk · UKHSA — UK radon maps
How long do conveyancing searches take?
Ordered together — which any competent solicitor does — the bundle usually completes in two to four weeks, dictated almost entirely by the local authority search. Drainage and environmental searches are typically back within a week. Slow councils stretch the bundle to six weeks or more, which is why searches should be ordered the week your offer is accepted, not after the survey.
If a search is the last blocking item and the chain is pressing, ask your solicitor about a search-delay indemnity policy — insurance that covers the risk of exchanging before a late search lands. Lenders often accept it; it costs tens of pounds, and it beats losing the chain.
Are searches compulsory? (the cash-buyer question)
If you have a mortgage, yes in practice — the lender’s instructions require them, because the lender’s security is the property. If you’re buying with cash, searches are optional in law, and skipping them saves a few hundred pounds and possibly weeks.
Skipping them also means buying blind on exactly the risks that are invisible from a viewing. The compromise many cash buyers choose: order the standard bundle anyway (it’s a fraction of a percent of the price), or at minimum run the free public checks — flood maps, planning register, radon maps, mining maps — and buy a no-search indemnity policy for the residual gap. What isn’t sensible is treating "cash buyer" as a reason to know less about the biggest purchase of your life.
The £5 head start: know the answers before you offer
Here’s the structural problem with searches: they happen after your offer is accepted, weeks into the process, after you’ve paid for a survey and committed emotionally. By the time a bad search lands, walking away costs money and momentum — so buyers rationalise, and negotiating power that existed pre-offer has evaporated.
Most of what searches reveal sits in open data you can check before offering. A Housometer report reads the same public registers in seconds for any address: Environment Agency flood zones with climate projection, ground stability and coal-mining legacy, radon potential, live planning applications at the property and next door, conservation-area and listed-building designations, plus the signals searches won’t show you — noise, air quality, crime. It doesn’t replace the official searches your solicitor certifies to a lender; it means their results confirm what you already knew, priced into your offer.
Searches are one line in the full cost stack — total the rest before you start:
Fee bands are typical 2026/27 figures and vary by firm, property and region; leasehold purchases usually add a few hundred pounds of extra legal work. Illustration only.