In 2009 allegations were made of malpractice within the Personal Search Industry. The allegations were mainly made by opponents of the industry and were that the reports prepared by Personal Search Companies were inferior in quality to council searches and more widespread concern that certain firms were knowingly not buying all the required data or failing to access legitimate sources of information. In October, November and December 2009 the PCCB (Property Codes Compliance Board) carried out thorough investigations of its Code Subscribers with regards to these allegations.
Frank Finch of the PCCB today made the following statement:
‘In summary, the enquiry found no evidence to support the allegation of widespread non-compliance. Rather it confirmed that the searches sampled were substantially compliant with the relevant regulations and with the Search Code.’
A total of 58 searches, comprising 900 questions were scrutinised, with errors being found in just 3% of answers and none of these related to the substantive allegations that data was either missing or inappropriate data was being used.
Finch went on to comment on the errors by saying that they
‘Appear to result from a lack of diligence rather than deliberate attempts to short-circuit the provisions in the Code. This is borne out by the fact that these failings featured in searches conducted by both personal search firms and local authorities in roughly equal measure.’
In fact, over half of all errors or omissions identified in the exercise related to local authority reports.
This goes to prove that Council Searches are no more reliable than those provided by firms who subscribe to the Search Code.
