Leeds Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

The requirements to join the Leeds Building Society conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

Lexsure only know of a couple of lenders that operate a separate conveyancing panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain threshold. You should nevertheless check directly with Leeds Building Society. At one stage HSBC would only allow Sole practitioners to act for them where the mortgage was below £150,000. We are not sure if HSBC still operate such a condition. In your case it is best to check with Leeds Building Society

In the same way that there is a unique Leeds 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. The BSA have not published the equivalent of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Part 3s.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Leeds Building Society to take a much more pro-active approach in relation to the management and make up of their conveyancer panels. The knock on effect of this is that it is more likely that there will be a higher number of cases where a conveyancer is not on the Leeds Building Society panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Leeds Building Society have appointed a separate lawyer to act on their behalf where the new CML Part 3 requirements apply. Section 11.1 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Part 3 requires Leeds Building Society’s panel solicitor to ‘ ...transfer the mortgage advance directly to the Seller’s conveyancer. The Seller’s conveyancer must be required to hold the mortgage advance on the terms of the required undertaking. The example borrower’s conveyancer’s undertaking letter includes a specific example of the seller’s undertaking’. You should expect to be advised to received the mortgage advance directly from the conveyancing solicitors for Leeds Building Society. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Leeds Building Society’s solicitors to discharge any charges secured on the property and to send directly to them the executed transfer and any other documents required to enable us to effect registration. Please remember to carefully consider undertakings in accordance with your firm’s protocol and record them in your undertakings logg. Please remember that as well as this breach of this undertaking having regulatory and compliance implications it’s breach could also result in your firm being removed off the Leeds Building Society conveyancing panel.

It would be advisable to provide details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not negatively affect your application but gives the Law Society a complete picture of what has gone on.

You should get in touch with Leeds Building Society to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook includes an individual question for lenders to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Leeds Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Always remember to disclose the firm’s Leeds Building Society conveyancing panel reference.