Nottingham 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 Nottingham Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

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

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

• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group
• Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)
• Full disciplinary history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer
• Whether any lender has ever made a claim against the firm’s PII cover
• List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable
• Whether the firm has ever applied for accreditation and the outcome of the application
• List of all those staff who work within the conveyancing team

We can't comment specifically on Nottingham 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 arrears 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.

Participation on the lender's panel of conveyancers is at the absolute discretion of the the lender. The days of open panels are now long gone. Many lenders reserve the right to accept or reject any application without giving any reason. You should check your original application to join the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel to see if you are entitled to a reason.

There are various requirements you need to follow if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the BSA Mortgage Instructions. (a) You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as compared to their old address.

The BSA Mortgage Instructions don't specifically deal with Solar Panels but it would be prudent as approved solicitors for Nottingham Building Society to raise the issue with them (as you would if the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook applied). In any event you need to raise the appropriate questions for your buyer client.

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