Clifton: Wealth of experience
A senior civil servant has taken over as chair of the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) amid the positive response to the government’s announcement of plans to digitise the home-buying process.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it would work with the DPMSG to pilot approaches to digitising and opening up property data and to introduce common data standards across the sector, while also driving the adoption of digital identity services.
The DPMSG has representation from the areas of the sector “where there is likely to be the greatest potential for accelerated digital adoption”.
On the conveyancing side, this is the Law Society, Conveyancing Association, Council for Licensed Conveyancers, Solicitors Regulation Authority, CILEX and CILEx Regulation, as well as HM Land Registry and groups representing surveyors, lenders, estate agents and tech providers.
In a sign of the government’s intent, the DPMSG revealed yesterday that Jonathan Clifton, deputy director for home ownership at the ministry, has been named at its new chair, in succession to Mike Harlow, deputy chief executive and general counsel of HM Land Registry.
The group said: “With a wealth of experience working in senior strategic roles, he is well placed to foster collaboration between government and industry, to set a clear direction for a secure and modern property market.”
The DPMSG roadmap, published just over a year ago, highlighted upfront information and accelerating the use of artificial intelligence as among its priorities.
Law Society vice-president Mark Evans said it was “encouraging” to see the government prepared to invest “time, money and energy into making transactions smoother for buyers and sellers and the professionals they work with”.
He continued: “While not a silver bullet, because there are many other aspects of the home moving process that need improvement, digitalisation could be transformative in this work over time.”
A Council for Licensed Conveyancers spokeswoman welcomed the commitment to “ensure that all the excellent work done so far [by the DPMSG] to plan the modernisation of homebuying can be implemented”.
She added: “We hope that the government will be able to remove the well-understood barriers to progress and that the entire industry will unite to deliver change in the interests of home buyers and sellers and of the country as we strive to make the best possible use of the housing stock.”
Simon Brown, chief executive of Landmark Information Group, described the announcement as “a significant step forward for the housing market after years of slowing growth”.
“Our data shows that the average property purchase transaction takes 120 days, owing to the complex and fragmented transaction process. We believe that the first priority should be to fix the process itself through the collaborative efforts of the wider property industry.
“Thereafter, the digitisation of the sector and greater sharing of data will undoubtedly help to streamline the process further.”
Joe Pepper, UK chief executive of conveyancing technology company PEXA, said: “For too long, our disjointed, fragmented and inefficient property transaction process has caused economic damage, and harmed consumer outcomes. This announcement is proof that the government has identified the scale of the issue, and has begun to grasp the nettle.
“Digitisation of data will go some way to breaking down the silos and speeding up access to data required to deliver a more streamlined process.
“But it’s a broad spectrum, and fundamentally we need a common way of sharing that data and managing the workflow, to allow conveyancers to do their job effectively without getting caught up in red tape and being forced to move at the pace of the slowest professional in the process.”
However, Stephen Larcombe, chair of the Property Lawyers Alliance, argued that practising professionally but in a modern manner should not mean “a passive acceptance by lawyers of the rampant hype from the law-tech sector, so practising law is reduced to mere algorithms”.
Writing on LinkedIn, he continued: “Jurisprudence is evolving all the time and needs the skills of professionals to ensure that it is not corrupted by greed. How does the Law Society convince the public of the necessity of using lawyers to protect them in an increasingly dysfunctional property market?
“For solicitors, they want their professional bodies to take the lead. Most property lawyers will not just sit back and allow their role to be diminished, or marginalised by stealth.”
David Jabbari, chief executive of conveyancing firm Muve, responded: “The truth is that there is very little law in the process except when matters become contentious. Let’s not confuse procedural knowledge of a process which is merely insured against in certain US states with disputations amongst KCs on a point of law in the appellate courts.”
But they agreed on other causes of delays in the home-buying process, such as what Mr Larcombe called “crippling AML red tape”.
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