When we started building Martello’s Mines & Minerals report, I didn’t want us to launch another commodity search product.
I wanted us to build something that genuinely improved confidence in property transactions.
Mining risk is one of those areas in conveyancing that can quietly create enormous uncertainty. Too often, reports produce broad warnings with little context, unnecessary failed outcomes, and not enough explanation about what genuinely matters to the buyer, lender, or conveyancer sitting behind the transaction.
That never felt good enough to me
Over the last year, our team has worked incredibly hard to build a product that approaches mining risk differently, with more context, more rigour, and more care.
I genuinely believe this is the best interdisciplinary work we’ve ever achieved at Martello.
We’ve brought together Geotechnical expertise, spatial analysis, software engineering, data science, UX thinking, and conveyancing insight into a single workflow designed to answer a simple question properly:
“Is this property affected by meaningful mining risk?”
One of the things I’m proudest of is the additional contextual review process we built into the report.
Rather than relying solely on blunt automated pass/fail logic, flagged cases are reviewed using surrounding property context, geological interpretation and mapping analysis before outcomes are finalised. These “eyes on” checks are undertaken by a geotechnical specialist, usually the infamous Tom Backhouse, whose insistence on technical rigour has been instrumental in shaping the product.
The result is significantly fewer unnecessary failed reports while still maintaining a robust and defensible approach to risk.
The report also includes the Law Society licensed CON29M form, alongside broader mining interpretation and enhanced environmental context. That means firms can now confidently protect buyers against both environmental and mining risks without worrying whether something has been missed between disconnected workflows.
We’ve also backed the report with £1m loss of value cover across all mining types, because we believe if you stand behind a report, you should stand behind it properly.
What’s been especially rewarding throughout this process is how collaborative this launch has been.
A huge thank you to:
for being outstanding partners throughout development and working closely with us to ensure exception rigour.
And equally, thank you to the many conveyancers and search providers who gave feedback, attended roundtables, challenged assumptions, tested ideas, and helped us shape the best possible version of this product. A lot of what makes this report good came directly from those conversations.
This launch means a lot to me personally because it reflects the kind of company I want Martello to be.
Not one that simply produces reports.
But one that genuinely improves how property risk is understood, communicated, and acted upon.
Check out our reports here: https://www.martello.app/our-products and contact your search provider for access.