ANDOVER solicitor Gordon Maidment has described Test Valley Borough Council's new computer system as 'a complete louse-up' after lengthy delays in its provisions of searches.

Searches are an integral part of the house selling process and Mr Maidment, of town centre firm Maidment and Burnfield, said: "Local searches have been taking a month compared to half that time before the new computer system was introduced. "Now solicitors have all received a circular from the council about the problem.

"The problem is delaying house moves and clients are getting fed up.

"Some have already had to delay house moves and others have had to pay removal firms' cancellation fees."

Compared with other nearby local authorities Mr Maidment says Test Valley is performing poorly - Salisbury and Kennet councils, he says, supply their searches within 10 to 14 days.

"Northampton has a new computer system and is supposed to be able to provide a search by return of post," added the solicitor.

"The Test Valley computer system was supposed to make things quicker here but it is a complete louse-up."

Test Valley admit there is a delay but says there are two factors to overcome - teething trouble with the new computer and the volume of work.

"The volume of searches has almost doubled in the last few months for the comparable period in the previous year," said the council's head of legal services, Mick Mundy in his letter to solicitors.

"In April we received requests for 450 searches compared to 270 last year and in May we are on target for 600 requests compared to approximately 300 last year. We are working closely with the supplier of the computer system to resolve the system's installation problems.

"To this end we had two representatives of the installation company in our office last week to resolve the problems identified to date but there remains a backlog of searches to deal with."