Home moving modernisation plans announced by Labour this week raise more questions than answers say a group of property lawyers and have pointed the finger of blame at government for endless red tape and poor regulation.
Property Lawyers Alliance (PLA), a collective of property lawyers who say they ‘support, inform, and protect the integrity of all property lawyers operating as part of the wider legal profession’, have further criticised the proposals as reducing the practice of law ‘to mere algorithms.’
Chair of the PLA Stephen Larcombe says it is Parliament who should take responsibility for many of the issues surrounding delays in the home buying process because of
- Crippling AML red tape
- A dysfunctional Legal Services Act
- A badly drawn Building Safety Act
- Underfunding of local authorities
- Unnecessary liabilities for home buyers concerning contaminated land
- Poor regulation of developers
- Hideously complex stamp duty on second homes
- The corruption of home buying by the payment of referral fees
- A dysfunctional Land Registry
“Lawyers have been around for a very long time. As the rule of law developed from the ‘property clauses’ of Magna Carta, property law principles evolved, and lawyers developed their craft. Moreover, they practised with a deep sense of professionalism that sense of practising law as part of a strong, independent legal profession, for a higher purpose. The challenge for property lawyers is to practise law professionally but in a ‘modern manner’. What does that look like in 2025? Surely not a passive acceptance by lawyers of the rampant hype from the law-tech sector so practising law is reduced to mere algorithms.”
said Larcombe. The PLA have been a vocal critic of the ‘up front information’ agenda and was instrumental in collating the requisite number of signatures to force the Law Society to call last year’s Special General Meeting.
“The Law Society was challenged last year at the Special General Meeting (SGM) to justify why it had taken various steps without a mandate from its members. Part of the requisition for the SGM called for the resignation of the Law Society President and CEO because it had joined the Home Buying & Selling Council (HBSC) without a mandate from its members. The Open Property Data Association (OPDA) is also a prominent member of the HBSC. All three appear to be working closely with the Housing Ministry as members of the Digital Property Steering Group.”
The PLA have also raised concerns about the creation of a digital infrastructure at a time when cyber attacks cause chaos and delays. Calling on the Law Society to ‘take the lead’ in representing its members Larcombe concludes
“Jurisprudence is evolving all the time and needs the skills of professionals to ensure that it is not corrupted by greed. How does the Law Society convince the public of the necessity of using lawyers to protect them in an increasingly dysfunctional property market? For solicitors, they want their professional bodies to take the lead. Most property lawyers will not just sit back and see their role diminished or marginalised by stealth.”
“There is little point in being part of a group of highly trained professionals if the public is unaware of what lawyers do for them. So, the Law Society must change its direction. More importantly, it must now listen to its members working at the conveyancing coalface. A false narrative has been created to justify the dumbing down of property law. As one lawyer put it succinctly to PLA: ‘These proposed changes are cosmetic and simply provide answers to the wrong questions’.”
Elsewhere, industry leaders have welcomed the government’s plans. In an effort to present a balanced view, Today’s Conveyancer has published comments both in favour of, and against the government’s plans: In favour of digitalisation; welcoming the modernisation of home moving
