Britannia Conveyancing Panel Information

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Britannia to take a much more pro-active approach in relation to the management and make up of their conveyancer panels. The knock on effect of this is that it is more likely that there will be a higher number of cases where a conveyancer is not on the Britannia panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Britannia have appointed a separate lawyer to act on their behalf where the new CML Part 3 requirements apply. Section 11.1 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Part 3 requires Britannia’s panel solicitor to ‘ ...transfer the mortgage advance directly to the Seller’s conveyancer. The Seller’s conveyancer must be required to hold the mortgage advance on the terms of the required undertaking. The example borrower’s conveyancer’s undertaking letter includes a specific example of the seller’s undertaking’. You should expect to be advised to received the mortgage advance directly from the conveyancing solicitors for Britannia. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Britannia’s solicitors to discharge any charges secured on the property and to send directly to them the executed transfer and any other documents required to enable us to effect registration. Please remember to carefully consider undertakings in accordance with your firm’s protocol and record them in your undertakings logg. Please remember that as well as this breach of this undertaking having regulatory and compliance implications it’s breach could also result in your firm being removed off the Britannia conveyancing panel.

With banks and conveyancers working so closely with one another it is surprising that there has not been much call for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the Britannia conveyancing panel but for all bank panel listings

You should supply details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not adversely impact your application but gives the Law Society viability as to what has happened.

You would be advised to contact Britannia to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook includes an individual question for banks to reveal who to contact to obtain standard documents. Britannia in their Part 2’s state: Please remember to disclose your Britannia conveyancing panel number.