Over a million land and property searches have now been run on the National Land Information System (NLIS), it was announced on 26 September 2003. The online system was launched in autumn 2001 and is run by the Improvement and Development Agency and McDonald Dettwiler. The news comes as a boost to its supportersafter earlier reports of disappointing take-up of the system by local authorities.
IDeA director of e-government John Thornton said: " 1m searches is a major milestone in the development of NLIS and shows that solicitors are truly embracing this online one stop shop approach to gathering land and property searches. We and our central government partners, HM Land Registry, are thrilled to see the legal community adopting online working and to see homebuyers benefit directly, from faster processed searches."
NLIS is a central online post box (NLIS Hub), which links to three internet sites called NLIS Channels, which solicitors use to purchase and access the search results. The rejection rate for searches historically is around 10%, but through NLIS this has dropped to 1% as solicitors now have all the correct information they need online when requesting searches.
An IDeA official told Government Computing News that every local authority in England and Wales has contributed to the catalogue for solicitors to carry out searches. Not all, however, are handling the full process electronically.
"Local authorities are at different stages in their modernisation," said the official. "When the solicitors sends in the search request, some will respond electronically and others manually."
Out of the 376 local authorities in England and Wales that are not county councils, 220 are now fully e-enabled to use NLIS, and another 19 are awaiting the relevant training.
Quelle: Kablenet
