The Government has announced new measures to deliver faster and cheaper property searches to speed up the process of buying and selling houses.

Local authorities should now aim to provide access to their data to private search companies within one working day. In return, they will be able to recover their costs by setting a fair charge for the improved access.

The Department for Communities and Local Government says search provision is improving but there can still be wide variations across the system. The best councils can provide information within hours but the worst can take two weeks. Some private search companies are often unable to access council data and so they have to take out insurance to cover any gaps in the information they provide.

Council charges for information can vary from £40 to £280.

The new system follows recommendations made by the Office of Fair Trading to improve competition between the public and private sector in the provision of searches.

Search results are a compulsory element of Home Information Packs which are now needed when selling homes of all sizes in England and Wales.