Material information, explained properly

The legal basis, in one paragraph

Material information is not a code of practice invention. The obligation sits in consumer protection law — since April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which replaced the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. It prohibits misleading actions and misleading omissions in a commercial practice, and a property listing is a commercial practice.

The test is whether the average consumer needed the information to take an informed transactional decision — to view, to enquire, to offer, or to offer at a given price. If they did, and it was omitted, that is a misleading omission whether or not any guidance document happened to list it.

The three-part framework

National Trading Standards grouped material information into three tiers. The framework is the clearest way to organise the work, and it remains the structure the portals are built around.

Part A — applies to every property

• Council tax band, or domestic rates in Northern Ireland
• Price and tenure
• For leasehold: lease length remaining, service charge and ground rent

Part B — applies to every property, because every property has them

• Property type, build form and construction materials
• Number and type of rooms
• Utilities — electricity supply, water supply, sewerage, heating type
• Broadband availability and predicted speeds
• Mobile signal and coverage by network
• Parking arrangements

Part C — applies where it applies, and this is the risk tier

• Building safety, including cladding and remediation status
• Restrictions: conservation area, listed status, tree preservation orders, Article 4
• Rights and easements, including public rights of way and shared access
• Flood risk and flood defences
• Coastal erosion risk
• Planning permission for the property and proposals for nearby development
• Accessibility and adaptations
• Coalfield or mining area status

Why Part C is where complaints come from

Parts A and B are largely within the seller's knowledge. They know the council tax band, the heating type and how many bedrooms there are.

Part C mostly is not. Sellers do not know their modelled surface water flood risk. They do not know whether the property sits in a coal mining referral area. They frequently do not know that an Article 4 direction has removed permitted development rights, or that a public footpath crosses the boundary.

So Part C cannot be gathered by questionnaire alone. It has to come from data — which is what a search is.

The five disclosures that generate the most complaints

Flood risk

Sellers answer this by whether the property has flooded. Insurers and lenders care about modelled risk by source. Surface water flooding is the fastest-growing source of flood damage in the UK and affects a great many properties nowhere near a river. A flood report gives risk by source at the address, plus an insurability view and Flood Re eligibility.

Mining

Coal mining referral areas cover far more of the North West than people expect, including parts of the Wirral, St Helens, Knowsley, eastern Liverpool, Wrexham and Flintshire. Whether a property is in one is a matter of record.

Rights of way and shared access

A shared drive, an access strip, a public footpath across the garden. All affect value, all affect whether a buyer proceeds, and all are discoverable from the title and the definitive map before marketing.

Restrictions on what the buyer can do

Conservation area status, listed building status and Article 4 directions remove rights buyers assume they have. A buyer who purchased intending to extend, and finds they cannot, has a complaint — and a reasonable one.

Connectivity

Broadband and mobile coverage are Part B, so they are required on every listing, every time. Estimating them is a poor idea when per-address data is available instantly.

Getting the answer from a source you can point to

The practical answer is to stop treating Part C as a questionnaire exercise. Order the data at the point of instruction, attach it to the file, and disclose from it.

That gives you three things a seller questionnaire never will: an accurate answer, a dated record of what you knew and when, and a named provider standing behind the report.