Newbury Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Newbury Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

No such training is arranged by the BSA although they do host a number of general conveyancing related conferences which are attended by firms on the Newbury Building Society conveyancing panel. Lexsure intend to run specific lender focused seminars in the coming months including a webinar on Newbury Building Society’s requirements . Practitioners on the Newbury Building Society conveyancing panel are welcome . Information about the webinar will be made available as part of the LENDERmonitor change Notifications .

The Law Society of Scotland has advised that solicitors should check their lender panel status prior to accepting client instructions to act. The advice is lender-agnostic as it does not relate specifically to solicitors on the Newbury Building Society conveyancing panel. The recommendation arises from the practice of a number of mortgage lenders who remove solicitors from their panels without prior notice as part of their panel management system, which can lead to some solicitors discovering this only once instructed. This is sensible advice as a client finding out midway through a transaction that their lawyer is not on the approved lender panel is very frustrating and can lead to complaints. Many online consumer forums contain posts where someone is complaining about finding that their lawyer is not on a lender conveyancing panel. Such forums include mumsnet.com

Each lender has different criteria. We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the Newbury Building Society conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

• Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers
• Whether the firm is able to operate in other jurisdictions
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full disciplinary history for each licensed conveyancer
• PII Cover details, including, if relevant, whether the firm is or has been in the assigned risks pool and structure of cover – top-up split and history of any refusals
• Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society
• List of all solicitors within firm
• List of all those staff who work within the conveyancing team
• SRA or equivalent regulator registration number where applicable

We can't comment specifically on Newbury 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 Compliance Officer, but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the borrower 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 valid? Please click here for more information about that case.

In the same way that there is a unique Newbury Building Society conveyancing panel most building societies, operate a conveyancing panel for solicitors and other conveyancers that the lender will instruct. Terms and Conditions and criteria for inclusion on a building society conveyancing panel vary from lender-to-lender. Having CQS accreditation may be a requirement.

Institutional lenders, such as a building society, is a client and is entitled to instruct the solicitor or conveyancer of its choosing (who, in turn, is free to accept or refuse instructions). Therefore, if lender and borrower cannot agree which solicitor or conveyancer should represent them jointly, they would usually proceed on a separate representation basis.

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel