THE Torridge Land and Property Search Team have proved themselves to be winners again at the eighth Local Land Charges Awards for Excellence.

The national awards, sponsored by the National Land Information Service (NLIS), celebrates the work and achievements of local authority local land charges departments, which carry out the land and property searches required for conveyancing transactions in England and Wales.

The awards cover six categories recognising customer satisfaction and service performance, with a winner and a highly commended for each category.

Recipients were chosen by a panel of judges from Land Data, the Local Land Charges Institute, NLIS, and SearchFlow and Thames Water Property searches. More than 145 representatives from local land charges teams across the country attended the event. 

Torridge District Council was the winner in the customers' satisfaction category and the highly commended runners-up in the best performance (level 3) category.

Torridge District Council is no stranger to the annual Local Land Charges Awards and is the only local authority in the country to have been shortlisted in the customer satisfaction award category every year since the awards were first introduced in 2008.

The team at Torridge, led by Kevin Crowl, has won this category twice in previous years, been highly commended on another two occasions and a finalist three times.

Jamie Hollis, Torridge's senior solicitor, said: 'I think sometimes we can get a little complacent in respect of how many awards this small team at Torridge has won.

'But what it shows is how Torridge consistently offers exceptional customer service in this area, which after all is what the main focus of our jobs should be.

'It is great to have this recognised at such a national level.'