Stafford Railway 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 Stafford Railway Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The Building Society Association Mortgage Instructions applicable to a solicitor on the Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel indicates that when a further advance is required for alterations or improvements to the property we will not normally instruct a member of the Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel but if you are instructed the appropriate provisions of the BSA mortgage instruction will need to be followed .

The BSA Mortgage Instructions state that the firm must keep the file for at least 6 years from the date of the mortgage. Data imaging is normally suitable compliance with this requirement. As a firm on the Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel you must allow Stafford Railway Building Society to conduct such reasonable audit of your information security measures as Stafford Railway Building Society or their agents may to ensure your compliance with your file retention obligations.

Although not necessarily published, lenders have varying criteria . We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

• Full disciplinary history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers
• List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group
• PII Cover details, including, if relevant, whether the firm is or has been in the assigned risks pool and structure of cover – basic split and history of any refusals
• Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)
• Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer

We can't comment specifically on Stafford Railway 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 buyer client 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.

There are many reports available but examples include:

• Average time frame to register charges at the Land Registry
• Average time frame to send deeds to the lender (calculated from completion date or title registration)
• Number of conveyancing cases by lender
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (purchase and remortgage)
• Average mortgage advance
• Buy to Let transactions
• Disclosure to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• Evidence of undertaking logs
• Current and historic missed priority dates
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g. existing client )

In the same way that there is a unique Stafford Railway 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