The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has criticised the inaccuracies it says remain in a highly critical report published by the Legal Services Consumer Panel (LSCP) in July, and which it says “created a completely false and misleading link to licensed conveyancers” relating to conditional selling exposed by the BBC last year.
The report called for immediate action to replace what it said is a regulatory framework that is not fit for purpose and was particularly critical of the CLC. The panel highlighted the BBC’s Panorama programme into conditional selling and referral fee arrangements used by estate agents as an example of poor regulation, claiming it revealed a “potential regulator blindspot” in how the CLC had supervised the arrangements.
Last week, the LSCP issued a clarification to its report, explaining: “We identified an inaccuracy in the paper’s description of the BBC Panorama investigation into conditional selling, in the section discussing the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.
“The original text stated that the investigation focused on referral fee arrangements involving licensed conveyancers. In fact, the investigation examined conditional selling practices by estate agents, and it was the CLC’s own subsequent review that examined referral fee arrangements.”
The clarification came three weeks after the CLC issued a statement defending its actions and highlighting the proactive action it had taken to investigate the use of referral fees in conveyancing.
“It is perhaps notable that we were the only regulator of conveyancing to do this”, CLC chief executive Sheila Kumar (pictured) said at the time. “Responding to market intelligence is the sign of a proactive regulator with a resolute focus on acting in the public interest and the capability and resources to do so. It is worrying that the panel misread this so badly.”
Now, in a statement shared with Today’s Conveyancer, the CLC says “inaccuracies remain” in the report and questions the oversight role of the Legal Services Board.
“Having raised with the Legal Services Consumer Panel a significant inaccuracy in their report, which created a completely false and misleading link to licensed conveyancers in its description of the BBC Panorama investigation into conditional selling, the CLC notes that the LSCP has now publicly taken steps to rectify that inaccuracy”, Kumar said.
“Other inaccuracies remain, however, and there is also the question of how such a document came to be published without effective checks by the LSCP or LSB. We are seeking a meeting with the leaders of both bodies to address these issues.”
The CLC published its interim report into the used of referral fees in June, and is currently gathering evidence to inform further recommendations.
One Response
The CLC’s quarrel with its oversight regulator is beginning to look less like principled disagreement and more like an entrenched posture. Its latest criticism of the LSCP report does little to advance consumer protection or professional confidence.
The LSB has already set the expectation with unmistakable clarity by requiring frontline regulators to place ethics at the centre of legal practice. That is the benchmark against which all regulatory behaviour will be judged.
The CLC may feel bruised by recent reports, but the underlying reality remains. It is frequently out of step with the wider legal profession on independence, conflicts and commercial pressures in conveyancing. In that context, it should welcome firm regulatory responses to the troubling practices exposed by Panorama, rather than resisting them.
And on the core issue, the profession is united. Ethical property lawyers reject fee models that risk distorting choice or corrupting the homebuying process. Integrity is the foundation of public trust.
The CLC must show leadership to its members by embracing the ethical standards now shaping the future of legal regulation.