Dudley Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is an association rather than a regulator and therefore do not advise on complaints against lenders. You can of course contact Lexsure to see if we can assist.

The concern here is if you are expect to enter into ‘more onerous’ conditions that than the Handbook obligations. You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the Dudley Building Society conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Conditions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before moving forward on this question.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Dudley Building Society 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 Dudley Building Society panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Dudley Building Society 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 Dudley Building Society’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 Dudley Building Society. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Dudley Building Society’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 Dudley Building Society conveyancing panel.

There are various requirements you need to follow if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook. First, You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as valued and the title and other documents which a reasonably competent conveyancer should obtain, and, if there are, you must tell Dudley Building Society immediately. (b) You should take reasonable steps to verify that the assumptions stated by the valuer about the title (for example, its tenure, easements, boundaries and restrictions on its use) in the valuation and as stated in Dudley Building Society’s mortgage offer are correct. If they are not, please let Dudley Building Society know as soon as possible as it will be necessary for Dudley Building Society to check with the valuer whether the valuation needs to be revised. Dudley Building Society conveyancing panel solicitors are not expected to assume the role of valuer. Dudley Building Society are simply trying to ensure that the valuer has valued the property based on correct information. Thirdly, Dudley Building Society recommend that you should advise the borrower that there may be defects in the property which are not revealed by the inspection carried out by their valuer and there may be omissions or inaccuracies in the report which do not matter to them as a lender but which would matter to the borrower. Dudley Building Society recommend that, if we send a copy of a valuation report that Dudley Building Society have obtained, you should also advise the borrower that the borrower should not rely on the report in deciding whether to proceed with the purchase and that he obtains his own more detailed report on the condition and value of the property, based on a fuller inspection such as a homebuyers survey or comprehensive survey. If you do not receive a copy of the valuation you can always ask for a copy of one from Dudley Building Society or the borrower. You still need to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Requirement relating to valuation reports even if you don't receive one directly. Failure to comply not only runs the risk of facing a claim by the lender but also being removed from the Dudley Building Society conveyancing panel

We would recommend that you provide details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not negatively affect your application but gives the Law Society a complete picture of what has gone on.

You should communicate with Dudley Building Society to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook has a specific question for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Dudley Building Society in their Part 2’s state: It helps to disclose the firm’s Dudley Building Society solicitors panel number.