Search Acumen has launched a new data and insurance product to identify risks to progress transactions as pipelines become delayed ahead of the end of the stamp duty holiday.

The property data firm says its Data Snapshot + Insurance tool allows immediate access for lawyers and their clients to all relevant property due diligence information needed to progress a transaction in the absence of an official Local Authority search.

It also provides up to £5m in insurance cover to both buyer and lender for adverse entries that would have been revealed by an official Local Authority search, which subsequently lead to an actual loss.

The stamp duty holiday is due to end at the end of March, after being launched by chancellor Rishi Sunak last July to boost the property market hit by the pandemic.

The Maidstone-based firm says it launches its online tool “at a time when the market is experiencing heightened delays with stamp duty relief putting unprecedented pressure on Local Authorities, which are in some cases being forced to close due to the lockdown”.

It adds the product provides an “overview of a range of physical, environmental, infrastructure and legal risk factors – including new data on areas of conservation, local nature reserves and highways as well as anything that could affect development such as planning, public rights of way and ownership rights”.

Search Acumen managing director Andrew Lloyd says: “With the challenges of progressing property transactions showing no signs of abating, it is essential that all parties come together to find solutions if we are to keep the market functioning for buyers in a timely but also safe and responsible manner.”

Lloyd adds: “This approach is not a stop gap but a solution to making the property market more robust and able to sustain unplanned events in future.”