Update on Land Charges Service and Planning Services issues in Havant Borough

This update from Havant Civic Society outlines our current understanding of the ongoing disruption to Havant Borough Council’s Planning and Local Land Charges (LLC) service – a situation that continues to erode confidence in the borough’s digital infrastructure and governance.

As many of you will know – particularly those currently buying or selling property in the borough – Havant Borough Council has been unable to provide statutory Local Land Charges (LLC) search services since July. This loss of service from a long-standing IT procurement issue has left the council unable to fulfil its legal obligations in support of property transactions.

Despite the council’s current announcement on its Land Searches web page that “We are very pleased to say that the LLC service is now live and able to run CON29 and EIR searches”, the small print reveals that the constantly-increasing backlog will need to be cleared manually on receipt of an email request until a new LLC search portal is delivered and implemented.

News that another product is forthcoming from Arcus Global adds nuance to HCS’s previous focus on the observed issues with the Arcus Global ‘Public Register’ planning portal, which went live in September. That portal was the first visible deliverable from the council’s decision to appoint “Arcus Global Limited to deliver two separate systems – a Generic Case Management system to support Environmental Health, Licensing and Grants, and the Arcus Platform to support the Council’s Planning Service.” Since the LLC search service was not specifically mentioned in the Cabinet decision document, we currently assume this additional portal had been included within the ‘Planning service’ system requirements.

Each of these council services is dependent on a shared capability to access historical records of activity relating to properties and land across the borough.

When the HBC Cabinet approved the Arcus contract in December 2023, it covered a five-year agreement to provide replacement software for the ‘two separate systems’ at a cost ‘not exceeding £245,000’ – a figure which seems remarkably optimistic given the scope of the data conversion and migration work that would be required. If the projected costs of the LLC portal now under development were also excluded from that estimate, the council’s financial exposure may be significant.

Since both the LLC Search Portal and the Planning Public Register portal rely on the same underlying data, Havant Civic Society would have expected both portals to be implemented together – fully tested and quality assured for internal and external users. A worrying conclusion is that the need for a new public LLC Search Portal may have been added as an afterthought, with its delivery now being expedited.

The new public access portal – the Arcus Public Register – went live in early September, immediately exposing the absence of any planning history detail to a much wider audience. HCS has submitted over a dozen serious issues with the system to Havant Borough Council’s Planning Services, yet not one has received the courtesy of an acknowledgement. As of the date of this post, all but one remain open.

Given the issues already evident in the live Planning Public Register – which HCS considers not yet fit for purpose – there is concern that the forthcoming LLC Search Portal, delivered by the same supplier, may suffer similar flaws upon implementation.

While Havant Borough Council has, until now, managed to keep this unfolding failure out of the mainstream press, it is becoming increasingly clear that the problems uncovered so far may be only the tip of the iceberg. Until the Arcus system can provide online access to the full digital archive of data previously available to the council online services, those statutory services will continue to be degraded.

Local Government Reorganisation note: If the HBC management team have any intention to allow this degraded Planning service to run until the software solution is replaced – once again – by the borough’s absorption into a new unitary authority, they need to face the non-negotiable facts. The full planning history must be restored before that next conversion and migration activity is undertaken.

HCS will continue to monitor developments closely and keep you informed. In the meantime, we encourage affected residents and professionals to share their experiences with us, so we can ensure your voices are heard.

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