Landmark Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, along with Landmark and other stakeholders developed a standard set of requirements where a solicitor is representing a lender such as Landmark alone in a residential conveyancing transaction. These requirements are contained at Part III of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook and are to be read together with Part I and II. The CML have published an example requirements letter to the borrower’s conveyancer for adaptation by the lender's conveyancer, and sets out to the borrower's conveyancer, the documentary and information requirements of the lender's panel solicitor.

We only know of a couple of banks that operate a separate approved solicitors panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain amount. You should nevertheless check directly with Landmark. 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 Landmark

The CLC has entered discussions with banks and their representative bodies to see whether and how the risks that lenders wish to mitigate could be addressed through the regulatory framework rather than via ad hoc arrangements that can differ from lender to lender. It is likely that that the CLC have been in touch with lenders such as Landmark in recent years.

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Disclosure/Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• Buy to Let transactions
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g.existing/new/seen in person)
• Number of conveyancing cases by lender
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)

In the circumstances please explain on the form what action you have taken to discover the reasons behind cancellation of your Landmark 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 Landmark to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook incorporates an explicit inquiry for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Landmark in their Part 2’s state: You will need to quote your Landmark conveyancing panel reference.