The team at Arun District Council are the only local authority to have won or been highly commended for an award every year for the past 7 years! The department is made up of 4 staff members, who as well as handling Local Land Charges, are also responsible for LLPG & Street naming and numbering. 

Karen started at Arun District Council in 1992 and joined the LLC team last year, bringing 23 years of planning experience working in Technical Support and as a Strategic Monitoring Officer.  

Jayne started at the Council in 1981 and has been street naming and numbering and managing the property gazetteer since 2002, working alongside the team in addressing and location support.  

With Agi joining in 2019 after spending a previous 8 years in Local Government and Dan having 20+ years’ in the LLC team (not including the time spent growing up in the office with his mum as an LLC Officer of over 40 years) the team now has over 100 years combined experience in Local Government! 

Finlay was born in 2021 and due to the continued working from home situation he has had a similar start to life as Dan, now attempting to crawl around under the desk as Dan did with his mum way back in the 1980’s! 
 
From an impressed conveyancer:  
 
“I've been dealing with the acquisitions of properties for 10 years and I deal with chains that span across the UK, I can easily say that Arun Local Land Charges are the swiftest local authority to issue searches compared to any other I've ever encountered” 

Left to right: Finlay Carman (the youngest member of the team born in April 2021), Dan Carman (Manager), Agi Davey, Jayne Hewstone and Karen Garner who joined in October 2021

This is the second year in a row that Havering have won this award! The team was also highly commended for three award categories in 2020, the Digital Data Award, the Best Customer Experience Award, and Local Authority Searches team of the Year. LLC Manager Hayley Ayris was named Unsung Hero by the NLIS Hub in the same year as well! 

During lockdown when the team wasn’t completing searches, Hayley occupied herself with reading as many books as possible while the theatres were closed. Janet transformed her kitchen and garden and Marie who is also a keen reader became the team’s chief recommender of box sets! 

Before working from home there was a common misconception at LBH that Janet and Marie were actually the same person, or were thought to be sisters, they are sometimes referred to as the Fringe Twins! 

Left to right: Hayley Ayris, Janet Commons and Marie McCarthy

A fifth-time finalist for this award category, the LLC team at the City of York collected the highly commended trophy in 2014 and the winners’ trophy in 2019 and 2020. The team came 5th in the same category in 2015 and 7th in 2017.  

The department consists of just two members of staff - Peter Audin who is the City of York’s Local Land Charges Manager and LLPG Manager (Peter is also the LLCI President) and Senior LLC Officer Ian Hartley. Throughout the pandemic the department has maintained a superfast turnaround time, often under 24 hours. 

Commenting on the department’s success, Peter Audin (far right) says: “I think it’s a mix of different elements, we have experienced staff who have access to a fully digitised repository of information, which we’ve built up over many years. We always check every step of the search process, which reduces the risk of error, and when we do need to reject a search we clearly explain why. As our offices have remained closed throughout the pandemic, we have asked personal searchers to submit an official LLC1, which has been working well to improve efficiency too.”

Left to right: Ian Hartley and Peter Audin

Outside of work, the team, who also run elections/electoral services, have been keeping themselves busy. Rob ran both the London and Newport Marathons in October greatly assisted by his running partner, Debbie. Denise has learnt woodworking skills and can make anything from tables to headboards. Denise is originally from Spain and both Rob and Debbie have been learning Spanish so we can set up our own little independent country within the Authority!

From left to right: Denise Brown, Rob Bates and Debbie Chandler

The Derby City Council Local Land Charges Team

The Derby team have made a lot of progress since 2019, when their service was suffering from operational difficulties and long-term sickness issues. With hard work and determination, the team progressed and got on the front foot. And then there was Covid! This presented challenges for everyone, for Derby it started with working from home and delivering records to colleagues to be quarantined in their garages before they could safely work on them! Thankfully the team all live within a few miles of each other. They hope to be working in the office again soon.

Pictured from left to right: Helen Lakin, Hannah Worrall, Ross Forster and Wendy Wignall

Other members of the team are: Karen Fullagar, Kulwant Gahunia and Emma Curzon