Barnsley Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, together with Barnsley Building Society and other members created a standard set of requirements where a conveyancer is representing a lender such as Barnsley Building Society alone in a residential conveyancing transaction. These legal instructions are contained at Part III of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook and are to be read together with Sections One and Two. The CML have published an example requirements letter to the borrower’s conveyancing solicitor for use by the lender's conveyancer, and sets out to the borrower's conveyancer, the documentary and information requirements of the lender's panel solicitor.

The criteria to join the Barnsley Building Society conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

We only know of a couple of lenders that operate a separate approved solicitors panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain level. You should nevertheless check directly with Barnsley Building Society. At one stage HSBC would only allow Sole practitioners to act for them where the mortgage was below £150,000. We are not sure if HSBC still operate such a condition. In your case it is best to check with Barnsley Building Society

We can't comment specifically on Barnsley Building Society. Many major lenders are now introducing ‘file auditing’ as standard practice in relation to completed matters. This raises questions of confidentiality in relation to the borrower and the purpose to which the results of such audits will be put. The starting point is to remember that the file does not belong to your firm, it belongs to the ‘client’. But, of course, we will normally have two clients – the buyer and the lender - and you will owe a duty of confidentiality to each. So basically, you have to separate the file and just send the lender the parts solely relating to themselves. But, of course, as this will basically be correspondence with the lender, mortgage instructions etc.

Check with your COLP but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the buyer client’s express consent – and if he is in dispute with the lender he is hardly likely to agree. However, if the lender can establish a prima facie case of fraud, then you may be under an obligation to disclose the whole file.

The emerging convention is that lenders are including an authority to disclose in loan application forms to counter this problem. Mortgage Express v Sawali, [2010] EWHC 3054 (Ch) indicates that such provisions are valid. Please click here for more information about that case.

In the circumstances please explain on the application what action you have taken to discover the reasons behind cancellation of your Barnsley Building Society panel membership. In particular please provide details if you have received communications from the lender. E.G. before cessation of your panel membership did you receive any letters or calls from the lender informing you as to why they reached this decision?

You would be advised to contact Barnsley Building Society to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook contains an individual section for banks to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. Barnsley Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Don’t forget to quote the firm’s Barnsley Building Society solicitors panel reference.