Landbay Partners Conveyancing Panel Information

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Average mortgage advance
• Buy to Let transactions
• Average time frame to register charges at the Land Registry
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g.existing/new/seen in person)

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Landbay Partners conveyancing panel. The top 3 reasons are as follows:

1. lack of transactions
2. the lawyer is a sole practitioner
3. as part of the HSBC panel reduction.

In these three circumstances it is unlikely that you would expected to take any action. Disclosure and other compliance considerations are more likely to be relevant if the reason for removal is due to breaches of lender requirements or allegations of fraud or negligence. Whether the reasoning should trigger a disclosable 'material' breach will depend on the firm and the circumstances around possible failures to comply with the SRA Authorisation Rules, and the SRA will judge each case on its own merits. Factors such as the detriment or risk of detriment to clients, the scale of the issue and overall impact on the firm will need to be considered in deciding whether a failure is 'material'. As the compliance officer you will need systems to identify patterns of breaches. Even if you don't consider there to be regulatory implications the firms COFA should give some thought to whether she/he needs to take any action as result of being removed from the Landbay Partners conveyancing panel.

When a solicitor is acting for both Landbay Partners and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent. In the situation you find yourself in if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender the solicitor must cease to act for the Landbay Partners and it may well be prudent you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You can not tell the Landbay Partners the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your Landbay Partners conveyancing panel status.

Your insurance brokers are your best port of call to address this question. The chances are that on the basis that you have not been removed for fraud or negligence reasons that there will be little or no impact. The main reason why a firm would be removed off of a lender panel is due to low volume of conveyancing cases although there may be a number of criteria for Landbay Partners solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You need to contact Landbay Partners to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook has an express question for banks to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. Landbay Partners in their Part 2’s state: It helps to quote your Landbay Partners solicitors panel reference.