With the government’s consultations on home buying reform and material information coming to an end, organisations within the conveyancing sector have shared their responses.
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) backs plans to regulate estate agents, and says failure to do so risks undermining the reforms. All key players within the conveyancing process must “have clear accountabilities and responsibilities, adhere to comparable ethical and professional standards, and be subject to comparable regulatory oversight.”
Providing material information upfront is “of fundamental importance to establishing a faster, smoother, more secure process that delivers greater confidence in the outcome,” the CLC said. It also supported the mandatory introduction of digital property logbooks, subject to certain criteria including that they were standardised, and the use of binding agreements if they allowed for fair withdrawal.
However, it disagrees with the proposed charter to help consumers identify quality property professional services, arguing that there were already other, similar schemes in existence.
The Conveyancing Association (CA) has “made clear its support” for reform, but warns key safeguards are essential to protect consumers and ensure conveyancing firms can operate sustainably.
Safeguards include the need for clearer and earlier provision of property information, but with firm limits on scope and liability for conveyancers, and clear recognition upfront information creates additional legal work that must be properly priced and resourced.
The CA has also stressed the importance of sellers instructing conveyancers at the very start of the process, before a property is marketed, to identify legal issues early and reduce the risk of delay or failure later in the transaction.
Standardised, trusted property data, shared through digital systems and property logbooks, to reduce duplication and improve confidence in the information relied upon by all parties are central to its responses, the CA said.
The Law Society of England and Wales says it supports home buying and selling reform, but more detail about the government’s proposals is needed, and regulatory burdens on conveyancers should be reduced “to make the market more attractive.”
The organisation also supports government intervention to drive up standards amongst estate agents, which it says is critical if the process is to improve.
“We share the government’s objective of a more reliable home buying and selling system, driven by informed consumers, innovative technology and high-quality professional services that ensure strong consumer protection,” Law Society president Mark Evans said.
The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) wants stronger regulation of the high-volume, low-value conveyancing sector to ensure the success of reforms, and says a review into the current fee structure for conveyancing work is also needed to ensure that quality of advice is not sacrificed in the move to a more streamlined service.
CILEX also supports the mandatory provision of upfront information when marketing a property, stressing the importance of consumer education on the consequences of providing inaccurate details. It also agrees with the introduction of digital logbooks, arguing that this must be backed by legislation.
It considers that binding conditional contracts would be beneficial but says more work is required to establish the practicalities of this approach outside chain-free transactions.
The Residential Logbook Association (RLBA), the self-regulatory body for property logbook providers, has called on the government to be more ambitious in its aspirations for property data and to empower homeowners to take control of their property’s data.
The RLBA wants homeowners to be given the right to access all public and private data about their home held on public or commercial servers, with the right to use recognised digital tools, such as logbooks and digital sales pack products, to access and manage that data.
Where information about a property is generated as part of a sale, such as a search or a survey, access to the information must be restricted to participants in the sale and the rights to the information transferred to the owner on completion, the RLBA said.
The Conveyancing Task Force, a group of conveyancers and law firms formed in response to the proposed reforms, says it supports the ambition of creating a faster and more reliable homebuying process, but emphasises that the primary barriers to progress are not technological.
Instead, the CTF believes structural, behavioural, regulatory and accountability failures are “the true causes of delay, cost and consumer harm”.
The founders of online client due diligence platform Thirdfort say the government needs to go further to ensure that technology that can revolutionise identity, AML and source of funds (SoF) verification in the home moving process.
Olly Thornton-Berry and Jack Bidgood say the government “rightly identifies” the role technology can play, but that they would also like to see harmonised regulatory guidance and clear technology standards.
The Thirdfort founders believe meaningful progress on data sharing cannot be achieved until the UK first agrees on a common, regulator-endorsed standard for ID, AML and SoF verification. Establishing such a foundation would allow the sector to move beyond unnecessary duplication and unlock the efficiency gains that digitisation promises, they added.
4 responses
The Law Society “also supports government intervention to drive up standards amongst estate agents, which it says is critical if the process is to improve.” Hear, hear.
Unfortunately, it aso seems the standards of some (not all by far) conveyancers and conveyancing firms need to improve. Particularly when it comes to the raising of relevant enquiries.
The sector has spoken.
Today’s piece in Today’s Conveyancer captures something important: the profession has found its voice. Not in anger, not in defensiveness, but in a calm insistence that experience, judgement and duty still matter in a system increasingly tempted by shortcuts.
As the Conveyancing Task Force meets for the third time today with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, that message will be carried again—quietly, firmly, and without apology. The criticality of lawyers’ professionalism remaining at the centre of the home-moving process is not a nostalgic plea. It is a recognition that the integrity of a property system depends on people who understand risk, context, and consequence.
‘Smart data’ cannot replace years of trained judgement, nor can it replicate the duty of care that sits at the heart of the solicitor’s role. Technology can assist; it cannot assume responsibility.
So where do we go from here? We continue to articulate, with steadiness rather than noise, that conveyancing is not a commodity but a professional safeguard. We continue to remind policymakers that reform must strengthen the system, not hollow it out. And we continue to show—through our work, not our slogans—that stewardship of the property market requires more than data flows. It requires people who understand what is at stake for every buyer, every seller, every community.
The sector has spoken. Now the task is to ensure it is heard in the places where decisions are made.
The sector has spoken, but not entirely with one voice. Promising nevertheless.
As I see it, the organisations named broadly agree on the ideal outcome, a faster, more reliable, consumer-protective system, but differ on how to get there. Agreement is strongest around upfront information, higher standards and digital support. Disagreement centres on how far regulation should go, how technology should be prioritised, how liability and fees should be handled, and whether reform should focus more on data or on deeper structural and behavioural change.
Reform ….. let’s start by confronting the true business models that now dominate residential transactions.
Those models are not built around legal protection. They are built around distribution, volume, and monetisation.
Recent public scrutiny such as the Dispatches estate agency exposé has shown how steering, sales pressure, and conflicted recommendations are not edge cases, but features of the modern property market.
Conveyancing sits at the centre of that ecosystem.
Large scale referral networks now sit between consumers and legal services, acting as gatekeepers to conveyancing work.
Networks pushed by agents and various online platforms and similar intermediaries position themselves as comparison or facilitation services. In reality, they operate as distribution platforms, funnelling work to selected panel firms in return for referral fees and commercial alignment.
For the consumer, this is presented as choice.
In practice, it is pre filtered access.
The solicitor is not chosen because they are the best fit for the client, they are chosen because they fit the commercial criteria.
Some of the UK’s largest conveyancing operations exist entirely within this panel ecosystem and operate at industrial scale, built to service bulk instructions generated by estate agents, lenders, and referral networks.
This model depends on high caseloads, standardised processes, thin margins and continuous panel access.
Legal judgement becomes secondary to throughput. This is not a criticism, it is the inevitable outcome of a structure where volume is the product.
Once referral fees and panel expectations are embedded, the legal work must flex around them. This produces the conveyancing factory model:
• Hundreds of live files per fee earner
• Heavy juniorisation
• Scripted workflows
• Minimal tolerance for deviation
This model has been repeatedly criticised in long-standing industry analysis warning of a conveyancing time bomb where risk quietly accumulates as files are pushed through the system at speed.
When something goes wrong, the model offers no slack, no resilience, and no safety net.
Firms operating at this scale become commercially dependent on a small number of panel relationships.
Lose a panel = lose cashflow.
This fragility has been laid bare by the collapse of PM Law, a firm built on volume. When it failed, transactions froze overnight.
Referral networks continued.
Estate agents moved on.
Clients were left exposed.
Surprisingly this is not enough, I have seen recently some referral networks and agents extending their control beyond the solicitor, dictating or promoting their AML / ID verification platforms, Search packs, “No move, no fee” insurance and Fast-track or premium products! These add-ons are introduced as protection or convenience.
In reality:
• They generate additional revenue
• They inflate the cost of moving
• They are often presented at moments of pressure
Clients are rarely told they can decline, shop around, or instruct their solicitor independently.
Across panel-driven systems, performance is measured by:
• Speed to exchange
• Compliance with process
• Agent satisfaction
Legal scrutiny does not sit comfortably here. Raising defects slows progress.
Advising caution disrupts sales momentum.
Recommending remedy vs indemnity (if possible) conflicts with conversion metrics.
When speed becomes the KPI, risk is externalised to the consumer. Public Scrutiny Is Catching Up ……. Slowly
The Dispatches investigation exposed a sales culture where conflicted incentives are normalised. The 2026 referral fee consultation is an admission, albeit a late one, that disclosure alone has failed.
But consultation is not reform.
Without addressing the architecture of panels, networks, and volume dependency, referral fees will simply be repackaged into bundled services, add-ons, and “optional” upgrades.
Disclosure Has Legalised Conflict, Not Removed It
The industry leans heavily on disclosure. But disclosure does not neutralise conflict. It normalises it.
Telling consumers that multiple parties are paid does not restore independence it shifts responsibility onto people who lack the information, leverage, or experience to assess systemic risk.
Independence Is the Only Structural Safeguard
Independent conveyancers sit outside this architecture.
They:
• Do not buy work
• Do not rely on panel approval
• Do not accept dictated suppliers or products
• Do not monetise failure or delay
They promise advice that survives scrutiny and act independently in their clients best interests.
This Is a Systemic Problem
The property industry does not suffer from a handful of bad actors. It suffers from bad system design.
Referral networks, panel dependency, legal factories, and transaction add-ons have reshaped conveyancing into a sales pipeline where risk flows in one direction only …downward.
PM Law is a warning.
Dispatches was a spotlight.
The 2026 consultation is an acknowledgment.
Until the underlying models are challenged, not merely disclosed, clients will continue to carry the risk of a system designed to profit from their move, not protect it.
And no amount of “recommended” language will change that.