Martin is a Senior Content Writer for Today’s Conveyancer, Today’s Wills and Probate, Today’s Legal Cyber Risk and Today’s Family Lawyer
Having qualified as a teacher, Martin previously worked as a Secondary English Teacher that responsible for Head of Communications.
After recently returning to the North West from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, Martin has left teaching to start a career in writing and pursue his lifelong passion with the written word.
The government are ramping up their commitment to solving the housing crisis as more local authorities now own building and development companies than ever before. According to a study conducted by the Royal Town Planning
Legal technology is still in its infancy and law firms are only beginning to scratch the surface in their understanding of how innovative tech can help the conveyancing process. The Government has recently invested £2
A group of national organisations have pleaded with the hopeful future leaders of Great Britain, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, to scrap the Right to Rent scheme which breaches human rights and causes racial discrimination
The UK’s top 50 law firms do not hold enough cash to cover an entire month’s wages if the sector suffered an economic setback. According to accountancy firm Smith & Williamson and website Legal Week,
Later life lending to set to double in the next decade. According to joint research, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) and commissioned by more 2 life, have found that
With the number of people over the age of 65 living in the UK set to increase by 20% in the next eight years, it is unsurprising that developers are diverting their attention and resources
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined the Bank of Scotland (BOS) £45 million for failing to disclose information about suspicions it held regarding suspected fraudulent activity within the bank’s Impaired Assets (IAR) team at
Annual property transactions in the year to May have fallen by 11.3% as political uncertainty continues to manipulate the property market. 89,810 residential property transactions were completed in May. This also represents a fall of
Following a landmark tribunal case which found that additional property bought in terrible conditions could bypass the current excess stamp duty land tax surcharge (SDLT) of 3%, legal experts, Primus Law, are calling on landlords
The Law Commission have called for more specific guidance to help improve anti-money laundering (AML) in the UK. The UKFIU processed 463,938 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) between April 2017 and March 2018, a 9.8% increase
More than one in ten adults across Britain own an additional home, but there is also a trend that property wealth is increasingly distributed extremely unequally. The Game of Homes Report, carried out by the
Older relatives are now lending out over £6 billion per year and have become the 11th largest lender in the UK. Whilst it is fantastic that many parents are in a position to offer their
Whilst the Government remain committed to achieving 300,000 new build properties per year within the next five years, a new audit is looking at how the design of residential developments has changed in the past
The property market remains stagnant as buyer enquiries remain poor and new instructions continue to decline. In March, enquiries for new buyers entering the property market yielded a respondent net balance of -27% which remained
The retirees of tomorrow are less likely to look upon their property as inheritance they will pass on after they die. According to the Equity Release Council report, ‘Beyond bricks and mortar: the changing role
‘The Bank of Mum and Dad’ (BOMAD) is set to become the 11th largest financial lender in the UK as older relatives offer loans worth a collective £6.3 billion to the younger generation. Despite the
Since the referendum result in 2016, around 1 million prospective British home buyers have delayed moving home because of Brexit uncertainty. Having commissioned a survey of 1.5 million Brits, GoCompare found that Brexit and the
The average leaseholder is now paying £319 in ground rent costs every year and have experienced an above inflation rate annual average rise of 5%. According to the NAEA Propertymark’s ‘Leasehold Report’, leaseholders are now
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has officially launched its investigation into the leasehold market today, June 11th 2019. In May, Andrea Coscelli, Chief Executive of the CMA, penned a letter to the committee chair
The Society of Licensed Conveyancers (SLC) and UK Finance have been working to standardise lending policies on unexpired lease terms to help ease the difficulties many leaseholders are finding when trying to resell their home.
Since the launch of the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme in 2013, around 65,000 households or a third (31%) of people using the scheme could have purchased their home without using Help to Buy.
The current Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, James Brokenshire, has claimed that first-time buyers (FTBs) should be permitted to use their pension pot to help fund the deposit needed to buy their
Agreed sales prices recorded throughout spring suggest that house prices are set to rise out of the Brexit blip and return to the levels of 2018. An analysis of the transactions agreed during April and
The Law Society have announced that the current practising certificate (PC) fee has been frozen for the third year in a row as regulators look to offer value for money and increase efficiency. The fee
Any individual or business suspected of having ties to cyber crime can legally have their assets in the UK frozen from today. The UK Cyber Attacks (Asset-Freezing) Regulation 2019 came into force this morning, Tuesday
First-time buyer (FTB) mortgages increase in April after a blip in March but remortgaging took a dive as recent mortgage trends suggest the property market remains confused in April. According to UK Finance Mortgage Trends
The private rental market could become the most dominant section of the property market within the next twenty years if market forces do not change. A generation of consistently rising house prices when coupled with
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) are reducing all compensation fund contributions for 2019/20. Individual contributions will now decrease from £90 to £60. Law firms will also save £530 as their contributions fall from £1,680 to
The extent of the housing crisis was highlighted this week as the current housing stock and newly built properties in and around the UK’s largest cities are failing to keep up with the huge growth
We are six months into the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulated changes to the way law firms share their price and service, yet only a quarter of regulated firms are fully compliant with the standards.
The number of applications being returned to conveyancers by HM Land Registry (HMLR) is increasing with 14.75% of all applications made by the 500 companies sending the most applications to HMLR resulted in a request
The UK construction sector experienced its sharpest decline in construction output since the storms of March 2018. According to the seasonally adjusted IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction Total Activity Index for May, the index rating had