15.2 Pre-Contract Searches and Enquiries

Title investigation tells you what is on the register or in the epitome. It does not tell you whether the road is adopted, whether the house sits in a floodplain, whether the local authority has served a planning enforcement notice, or whether the seller's boiler has never worked. Those answers come from pre-contract searches and enquiries. The September 2026 FLK2 specification expects you to know the range and purpose of this work, who would make the searches and raise the enquiries, and the issues that can arise from the results. This independent OpenExamPrep section is teaching material for that heading. It is not a substitute for the current search forms or for a live Protocol file.

Who does what

On an ordinary freehold purchase the buyer's solicitor commissions the searches that interrogate public registers and commercial databases, and raises any additional enquiries that the protocol forms have not already answered. The seller's solicitor supplies the deduction of title (official copies or epitome), obtains the seller's signed protocol questionnaires, and replies to legitimate extra enquiries. The seller answers questions of fact about the property. The buyer instructs on risk once you have explained it. If you also act for a lender, the UK Finance Lenders' Handbook (Part 1 generally, Part 2 for that lender) can require extra searches or a particular form of certificate. You do not skip a Handbook search because the buyer is in a hurry.

That division of labour is the exam point. A local authority search is not the seller's gift. A TA6 is not a search. A lender's bankruptcy search against the borrower is a pre-completion lender requirement, not a substitute for a pre-contract local search.

The usual search suite

Match each search to the question it answers. If you cannot name the question, you cannot advise on the result.

Optional extras follow the property, not a superstition: HS2 or other infrastructure, railways, tin or clay in particular districts, a highways-extent search where CON29 is unclear, and a commons registration search where CON29O flags the risk. The point is not to memorise every product name. The point is to choose searches that answer the risks of this plot, then read the results.

Enquiries

On a residential Protocol file the seller completes TA6 (Property Information Form) and TA10 (Fittings and Contents). Leasehold would add TA7; this chapter is freehold, so TA6 and TA10 are the core. They cover disputes, notices, alterations, guarantees, occupancy, flooding, Japanese knotweed, and what is staying in the house. The buyer's solicitor reads them against the official copies, the survey, and the searches. A TA6 that denies flooding next to a flood report showing Zone 3 is not a trivia clash. It is an enquiry to raise, a client conversation, and possibly a surveyor or insurer to involve before exchange.

CPSE.1 (and the other CPSE modules) do the same job on commercial freehold. They are heavier on planning, construction, VAT, and employees. Do not send CPSE.1 on a Protocol house purchase, and do not send TA6 on a warehouse investment and call the job done.

Issues that arise from results, and further action

A result is not a souvenir. It is a prompt.

If CON29 shows that the road giving access is not maintained at public expense, the buyer may be taking on a private road: maintenance costs, a possible ransom strip, and the need for express rights if the title does not already grant them. Further action is to obtain any private road agreement, check the title for easements, advise on cost and enforceability, and take instructions. If the local search shows a planning enforcement notice or a listed-building issue, you do not exchange on the basis that the seller has promised to sort it out unless the contract machinery actually secures that outcome. If drainage is private, you ask how it is documented and whether a treatment plant sits on land the buyer will own, with rights to use and maintain it.

Discrepancies are as important as headline hits. Seller says no neighbour disputes; the surveyor photographs a wall argument. Seller says all windows were replaced with building-regulations approval; there is no completion certificate. Further action is a targeted enquiry, a document request, indemnity insurance only where the risk is insurable and the lender will accept it, or a price/condition renegotiation. Insurance is not a magic wand: some lenders restrict when you may use it, and contacting a covenantee or a potential claimant can make the risk uninsurable.

Speed is not an excuse to skip the suite. A buyer who wants to exchange this afternoon without a local search is asking you to certify a risk you have not investigated. If they still insist, your report must say what is missing, what could go wrong, and that you cannot give the usual completion undertakings to a lender on a blind file.

Law Society Conveyancing Protocol

The Law Society Conveyancing Protocol is the standard residential workflow in England and Wales. It is a process, not a statute, but SQE1 treats it as core practice knowledge. In outline the Protocol expects:

• the seller's solicitor to assemble a contract pack early: draft contract, official copies and title plan (or epitome), TA6, TA10, and other relevant documents such as guarantees and planning consents;
• the buyer's solicitor to investigate that pack, raise only additional enquiries that are specific to the transaction, and commission the usual searches;
• both sides to use the Law Society formulae for exchange, the Code for Completion by Post, and standard undertakings rather than inventing private machinery;
• transparency with the client about costs, timetable, and the difference between a legal defect and a surveyor's physical defect.

The Protocol's most examined cultural rule is the attack on recycled preliminary enquiries. If TA6 already asks whether there have been disputes, you do not send a 40-question extra list that asks the same thing in different words. You do ask a further question when a search, a plan, or a survey has thrown up a new fact. That is professional, not obstructive.

Wales uses the same Protocol architecture and the same Land Registry. The local search still goes to the relevant local authority. Planning policy in Wales is devolved, so a CON29 planning history is read against Welsh planning control, not against an English assumption. Tax remains a later-chapter topic: the search suite does not calculate LTT, but your timetable must leave room for the Welsh filing deadline once the later chapter has taught the rates.

Keep the client in the story. Searches are bought with the buyer's money and read for the buyer's decision. A clean local search does not cure a Boland occupier. A glowing TA6 does not cure an undischarged charge. Searches and title investigation are parallel tools; you need both before you ask for authority to exchange.