Nottingham Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Nottingham Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA Mortgage Instructions relevant to a solicitor on the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel indicates that when a further advance is required for alterations or improvements to the property we will not normally instruct a member of the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel but if you are instructed the appropriate provisions of the BSA mortgage instruction will need to be followed .

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

The BSA Mortgage Instructions state that the firm must keep the file for a minimum six years from the date of the mortgage. Data imaging is normally suitable compliance with this requirement. As a firm on the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel you must allow Nottingham Building Society to conduct such reasonable audit of your information security measures as Nottingham Building Society or their agents may to ensure your compliance with your file retention obligations.

We can't comment specifically on Nottingham Building Society. Many major lenders are now introducing ‘file auditing’ as standard practice in relation to completed matters. This raises questions of confidentiality in relation to the borrower and the purpose to which the results of such audits will be put. The starting point is to remember that the file does not belong to your firm, it belongs to the ‘client’. But, of course, we will normally have two clients – the buyer and the lender - and you will owe a duty of confidentiality to each. So basically, you have to separate the file and just send the lender the parts solely relating to themselves. But, of course, as this will basically be correspondence with the lender, mortgage instructions etc.

Check with your Compliance Officer, but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the borrower client’s express consent – and if he is in arrears with the lender he is hardly likely to agree. However, if the lender can establish a prima facie case of fraud, then you may be under an obligation to disclose the whole file.

The emerging convention is that lenders are including an authority to disclose in loan application forms to counter this problem. Mortgage Express v Sawali, 2010 EWHC 3054 (Ch) indicates that such provisions valid? Please click here for more information about that case.

In order to be on the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel solicitors have to complete an application form and agree Terms and Conditions. A sample of 5 conditions that we see amongst many lenders Terms (but not necessarily Nottingham Building Society) are as follows:

• To quote on all communications with us relating to registration issues, whether by telephone or in writing, the panel number that we provide for each practising address and the mortgage account or application number for the mortgage concerned.
• To forward the title deeds and documents to another solicitor within 24 hours of an instruction from us requiring you to do so. On forwarding the deeds as instructed you will confirm to us that you have done so. Upon receipt of your confirmation, we will release you from all undertakings relating to your holding the title deeds.
• That any deeds you borrow from us in connection with the personal mortgage of a partner or director at your firm must be requested by a partner or director other than the partner or director concerned and the transaction must be handled by that other partner or director. If you are a sole practitioner and require the loan of deeds in connection with your own mortgage, you must nominate a different firm on our panel to request the deeds and handle the transaction.
• If you are a sole practitioner, to arrange for appropriate locum cover from our panel where necessary. Your locum must be a member of the Conveyancing panel.
• Without prejudice to your obligation to comply in full with the Safeguards provisions in the BSA Lenders’ Handbook, to report to us as soon as possible any suspicion that you have about the genuineness of any transaction in any respect.

The answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Nottingham Building Society conveyancing panel. The top 3 reasons are as follows:

1. lack of transactions
2. the lawyer is a sole practitioner
3. as part of the HSBC panel reduction.

In these three circumstances it is unlikely that you would expected to take any action. Disclosure and other compliance considerations are more likely to be relevant if the reason for removal is due to breaches of lender requirements or allegations of fraud or negligence. Whether the reasoning should trigger a disclosable 'material' breach will depend on the firm and the circumstances around possible failures to comply with the SRA Authorisation Rules, and the SRA will judge each case on its own merits. Factors such as the detriment or risk of detriment to clients, the scale of the issue and overall impact on the firm will need to be considered in deciding whether a failure is 'material'. As the compliance officer you will need systems to identify patterns of breaches. Even if you don't consider there to be regulatory implications, the firms COFA needs to consider whether he or she needs to take any action as result of being removed from the conveyancing panel of Nottingham Building Society.

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel