Information for local authorities and other public bodies

Fairness Campaign

Read about our various fairness campaigns against anti-competitive practices, negligence, malpractice and more here.

Our fairness campaigns

Case Histories

You can find more details about our work and specific cases with our Case Histories articles.

Our case histories

Empty Homes Services

We work with local authorities and other public bodies, finding missing relatives or locating property owners of empty buildings.

Tracing Empty Property Owners

When relatives have to be found

We work with local authorities and other public bodies, finding the next of kin of those who die intestate within their boundaries. We also act as tracing agents, locating property owners or their heirs in order to bring empty homes back into use.

Our probate genealogy services are provided free of charge to the public sector. We earn our fees by reaching commission agreements with any heirs we locate.

At Anglia Research, integrity comes first – and nowhere is this more important than when private and public sectors meet. The documents on our Fairness Campaign page provide a detailed explanation of why we oppose exclusive relationships between heir hunters and local authorities.

 

Free, fast and failsafe

  • We employ more accredited genealogists* and legally qualified graduates than any other UK probate research company. The calibre of our team means that we find relatives fast and, crucially, we do not cut corners.
  • Our compliance director is a solicitor whose working life has been in and around local government and whose legal specialism since 1992 has been in public sector related law. Her detailed knowledge means that we are equipped to protect your good reputation as carefully as we protect our own.

Learn more about our work – Peter Turvey remembers a case involving the UK’s most popular surname

We picked up the Mary Torrance case as a result of a Freedom of Information request about public health funerals that we sent to a council in the north of England.

Mary Torrance died, intestate and with no known relatives, in 2013. However, I was able to establish that she had a daughter, Amy, who sadly predeceased her, and two granddaughters, Susan and Helen Smith.

It’s fair to say that no genealogist cheers when they come across the country’s most widespread surname. But while it’s hard tracing someone’s family tree when the name Smith is involved, actually locating a particular living Smith amongst all the Smiths in the country can be even trickier.

The local authority was in a bind with this case. They couldn’t pass it to the Bona Vacantia Division, because there were thought to be surviving relatives – but no one could locate them.

I wrote to Susan and Helen several times, using the address on their mother’s death certificate, but received no reply.

I also contacted a number of government agencies that might have dealt with the granddaughters and tried various specialist address-finding services, but all without success. Even scouring the electoral roll for more recent addresses was to no avail.

At this point I shifted my focus from the granddaughters to their father, George Smith. I was able to track him through time using the electoral roll – and educated guesswork – as he moved from one small village to another. On a couple of occasions, he had one or both of his daughters registered to vote at the same address.

Once I could pinpoint exactly what part of the country Susan and Helen had moved to following their mother’s death, I was no longer looking for a needle in a haystack and was able to make contact with them.

The council recouped the funeral expenses and the two granddaughters each received their share of their grandmother’s estate.

Read More Case Histories Our Services

Case manager Rachel Knock discusses a case that involved a sudden change of direction

This was a public health funeral case that a local authority in the west country posted on their website.

Patricia Goody died intestate in 2016 with no known next of kin.

When I started researching this case, Patricia’s closest living relatives appeared to be cousins and cousins once removed on her mother’s side. However, when I spoke with one of the cousins, she mentioned that Patricia’s mother had abandoned her when she was very young, moved up north and remarried.

Obviously, that had to be investigated.

It’s a fundamental rule of probate research: no matter how methodically and accurately you have trawled through the genealogical record, it’s always possible that you’ve missed something. To arrive at the truth, you’ve got to talk to people, ask questions, and be ready to start work all over again.

As it turned out, Patricia’s mother had five further children. Apart from one, who had died without issue, we traced them all. The council recouped their funeral costs and the estate has now been distributed between Patricia’s closest living relatives, her half-blood brothers and sisters.

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