The Chorley & District 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 The Chorley & District Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA Mortgage Instructions applicable to a solicitor on the The Chorley & District 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 The Chorley & District Building Society conveyancing panel but if you are instructed the appropriate provisions of the BSA mortgage instruction will need to be adhered to .

We are not aware of any intention on the part of the BSA to develop such a search facility .

If you are a property lawyer and have a query relating to the Specific Requirements, you should make contact with The Chorley & District Building Society. The BSA will not advise or comment on specific queries relating to The Chorley & District Building Society or other lenders.

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

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the The Chorley & District 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 The Chorley & District Building Society.

Participation on the lender's panel of conveyancers is at the absolute discretion of the the lender. The days of open panels are now long gone. Many lenders reserve the right to accept or reject any application without giving any reason. You should check your original application to join the The Chorley & District Building Society conveyancing panel to see if you are entitled to a reason.

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