East Riding of Yorkshire Council told to make conveyancing information freely available

Conveyancing in the East Riding of Yorkshire may have just become a little bit less expensive as the Information Commissioner has directed the local council to open up more of their information about properties in their district. This will assist conveyancing lawyers who specialise in conveyancing in the East Riding by giving them better access to information, particularly, environment histories that are sometimes required in the conveyancing process.

Where a house is bought or remortgaged, it may be necessary to search the information held about it by the Local Authority. The particular request that  East Riding was asked for was "to inspect the Building Control/Traffic Schemes abutting/Highway Schemes within 200m records in situ as soon as possible for the following land and buildings: [named property]"

The Commissioner found that the East Riding of Yorkshire Council had been wrong to refuse inspection of the information, as it was environmental and therefore subject to the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (SI 2004/3391). The decision  rule will open up the Local Authority registers even more without them being able to charge exorbitant fees, a decision that is welcomed by the Fridaysmove Conveyancing in East Riding team.