Replies to this enquiry form can be supplied by the Land Charges Team for a standard fee (see Land Charges Search Fees) or various records held by the local authority and other agencies can be researched so that an individual can draw up their own replies.  Some of this information can be found on statutory registers and/or various websites. Other information can only be obtained from Torbay Council and involves research of records held in many different formats by staff in various departments of the Council.

You will need to complete a request form (a 'Con29R' form – obtainable from Law Stationers) to give details of the property and your contact details and send it to the Land Charges Department with  a plan clearly identifying the property’s boundaries* and the relevant fee (see Land Charges Search Fees).  Alternatively, you can complete Torbay’s short version of the application form (Torbay 2), which also includes options for applying for other documents that form part of a local authority property search.  The Local Land Charges Team will send you the replies within 3 to 5 working days.

If you are also submitting an application for an Official Certificate of Search of the Local Land Charges Register it is useful to submit your Con29R application at the same time either by using the official application forms or Torbay’s short version (Torbay 2).

The fees for replying to both can be incorporated into one payment and only one plan will be necessary.  The Official Certificate of Search and the Con 29R replies will be returned to you as one complete document.

Documentation below sets out the way in which replies to individual enquiries can be obtained and gives details of the fees payable for the information that can be supplied by the Land Charges Department, if required.

A one-off fee is payable to cover the administrative procedures undertaken by the Land Charges Department to process each application and then each question is charged at a price that reflects the amount of work involved in identifying the information needed to reply to the question.  To obtain the required information, the Land Charges Department will follow exactly the same procedures as it does to provide a complete set of replies.

To obtain information for individual questions from the Land Charges Department, you will first need to complete a request form setting out the details of the property you are interested in and the questions that you require information for (see Form Torbay 1).  It will also be necessary to supply a copy of a plan identifying the property’s boundaries*.  

You can send the form and plan to the Land Charges Department at the Town Hall, Castle Circus, Torquay, TQ1 3DR or  DX 59006, Torquay 1) together with a cheque for the relevant fee and the Land Charges Department will return the information to you within 3 to 5 working days or you can collect it at an appointment made for that purpose.

If you are submitting an application for a personal search of the Local Land Charges Register via email, both applications can be made on the same form (send to landcharges@torbay.gov.uk).   You should then be able to collect and pay for the Con29R information at the same time as you collect and pay for the personal search**.  

* All plans submitted should be in an up-to-date Ordnance Survey map format (scale 1:1250 or 1:2500) with the boundaries of the property clearly marked in red. If the plan is feint or blurred or the Land Charges Team is unable to easily identify the boundary, your plan will be rejected and the search could be delayed.

** From time to time it may not be possible to supply the information about individual enquiries at the same time as the personal search (sometimes one of the departments that supplies the Land Charges Department with information needs to obtain further details or carry out a site visit before it can supply up-to-date information). The Land Charges Department will endeavour to provide you with the information at the same time but if it cannot it will annotate the result accordingly and a revised set of results will be sent to you via email as soon as the information is available (this should always be within 5 working days of your original application).

The information needed to reply to Con 29R enquiries can also be accessed under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. This is not a function carried out by the Council's Land Charges team. Please contact team to access information in this way.