Stafford Railway 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 Stafford Railway Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

Stafford Railway Building Society ‘s answer to this question can be found at section B.3 of their BSA Mortgage Instructions which states:

If you are a solicitor and have a query about the instructions, you should make contact with Stafford Railway Building Society. The BSA will not advise or comment on specific queries relating to Stafford Railway Building Society or other lenders.

Although not necessarily published, lenders have varying criteria . We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

• Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes
• Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers
• Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)
• Full disciplinary history for each conveyancing solicitor
• PII Cover details, including, if relevant, whether the firm is or has been in the assigned risks pool and structure of cover – top-up split and history of any refusals
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society
• List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable

We can't comment specifically on Stafford Railway 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 buyer client 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 dispute 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.

When a solicitor is acting for both Stafford Railway Building Society and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent.

In your situation, if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender, the solicitor must cease to act for Stafford Railway Building Society and it may well be prudent for you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You must not inform Stafford Railway Building Society of the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your Stafford Railway Building Society conveyancing panel status.

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

14 borrowers search for a property lawyer on the Stafford Railway Building Society panel on a monthly basis in Hendon. The lenderpanel directory service team who will show you how your firm can be found by those searching for conveyancing in Hendon.