About Conveyancing

Author: Simon Seaton

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Simon Seaton is a former UK solicitor and a director of Lexsure. He has assisted hundreds of law firms, from small practices to firms ranked in the top 500, with compliance needs spanning SRA requirements, mortgage lender instructions, CQS and anti-money laundering. His AML experience includes developing policies, procedures and systems, and conducting independent audits of firms’ policies, controls and procedures. He has also delivered hundreds of webinars and seminars for lawyers and mortgage lenders on compliance, conveyancing risk and AML. Over the years, Simon has liaised on AML and risk management matters with organisations including UK Finance, the Bank of England, the Metropolitan Police, the National Crime Agency and the Financial Conduct Authority, as well as major mortgage lenders and professional indemnity insurers.

  • Will the Flood Risk Regulations 2009 affect Conveyancing ?

    The well timed The Flood Risk Regulations 2009 (FRR 2009) will come into force next week on the 10 December 2009. The FRR 2009 transpose Directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks (the Floods Directive) into law in England and Wales.

    The Regulations require lead local flood authorities to, amongst other things, prepare preliminary flood assessment reports, identify flood risk areas, prepare flood hazard and risk maps and prepare flood risk management plans in relation to each flood risk area.

    It will be interesting to see whether as a result of legislation and greater information conveyancing lawyers being required to carry our further checks. I am anticipating that at some point within the next couple of years the CML Lenders Handbook will be developed to include a requirement for further investigation into flood risk.

    It is time to update your Report on Tile on flood risk and to explain how the property may be at risk of coastal flooding despite the presence of flood defences.

    2026 update: flood risk, mortgageability and later sales

    Flood risk is now relevant not only to searches and physical exposure, but also to insurance, mortgageability and the future marketability of a property. Our later article, When the Flood Waters Recede, Will Conveyancing Lawyers Face a Deluge of Claims?, considers the potential consequences for conveyancers where flood risk and the availability of appropriate searches were not properly addressed.

    If flood risk is now holding up your sale or remortgage, or affecting the availability of insurance, see the When I Bought guide to flood risk discovered after purchase. It explains what evidence from the original transaction may matter and why the advice given when you bought could be relevant.

    Mortgage lenders have not always approached flood risk in the same way, and individual requirements have changed over time. The Lexsure Lender Archive flood risk page provides access to historical lender-specific requirements according to the lender and relevant transaction date.

  • The ever-changing landscape of conveyancing and referral fees

    The conveyancing profession is not what it was fifteen years ago let alone thirty years ago.

    Fifteen years ago when I qualified as a solicitor the conveyancing market was dominated by conveyancing solicitors conducting transactions. I suspect that today more than 30 % of transactions are carried out by unqualified staff.
    Conveyancing solicitors have squandered the high esteem in which we were held by the public. The demise of the conveyancing solicitor started when the Thatcher government broke the conveyancing monopoly in the belief that competition was a ‘good thing’

    The emergence of licensed conveyancers sparked a price war with conveyancing costs being cut again and again. The lesson that should have been learnt was to compete on price but on service and to collectively highlight the deficiencies of cheap conveyancing. Unfortunately, solicitors did not learn their lesson as will writers, claims handlers, independent advisers – all have chipped away at solicitor’s preserves so that they really do not exist any more. Solicitors need back to justifying why the public should pay for expertise. We all know that cheap equals dear but the public have not realised this.

    Solicitors need to create coordinated effort to challenge panel providers or conveyancing factories. I’m not going to bet much on your efforts, but it will certainly outperform a solo effort.

    How ironic that so may solicitors have been up in arms in the suggestion that referral fees should be abolished arguing that they are being asked to fight with one hand behind their back. Paying fees for work is a false economy and with 2011 not far away law firms should be thinking about how they can win business directly. Paying referral fees just means you are delaying the inevitable. The panel provider or supplier of business will drive your margins lower and eventually be competing with you. Why feed your future competitor? Quiet, passive-aggressive whining in the corner is both annoying and ineffective.

    Update (2024): Aside from the economic virtues of paying referral fees, one needs to question whether such  behaviour would be in breach of the firm’s CQS Anti-Bribery Policy.