Evans: Seeking guidance from government
The Law Society has “paused” work on a material information (MI) form for conveyancers, after the National Trading Standards (NTS) estate and letting agency team withdrew it guidance on the issue last month.
However, Mark Evans, vice-president of the society, said work would continue on a sixth edition of the TA6 property information form, which is due for publication in October.
It was last year’s launch of the fifth version, which includes upfront MI that NTS said should be disclosed by estate agents on property listings, that provoked a furious reaction from some conveyancers and led to a special general meeting of the society.
Although a motion of no confidence in the society’s leadership was defeated, the society decided to replace the fifth version, containing no MI, and a second, optional form on MI, in what was described as a “two-form approach”.
However, speaking at the annual Bold Legal Group conveyancing conference in London this week, Mr Evans said that after NTS withdrew its guidance, “which took many people by surprise”, the society had “paused our work on the material information form”.
NTS did so because the guidance was based on estate agents’ obligations under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which have now been superseded and replaced by the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
The Law Society was “seeking guidance from the government” on what is going to happen on MI, and the plan was still to introduce the MI form in October “unless things happen in the future – we’ll have to wait and see”.
Mr Evans said a government minister told him last week that the government was “continuing to review what further guidance was needed [on MI] and considering our next steps”.
Meanwhile, the sixth edition of TA6 was “out there for testing” with law firms and the public, and the fourth and fifth editions would remain valid until March 2026.
The form was 20 pages long, with separate, “quite detailed explanatory notes” for the client and conveyancer.
Mr Evans said he had told the government that it was “a worry and a concern” that solicitors were “heavily regulated”, but “not everyone” else in the property market was, particularly estate agents and managing agents.
In the Law Society consultation that followed last year’s debacle, most respondents saying they wanted estate agents to be regulated, as did almost every delegate to the BLG conference on a show of hands in the room.
Since change would require legislation and regulations, Mr Evans warned that this might be a “longer-term push”.
Mr Evans said he “understood the pressures” on conveyancers in terms of anti-money laundering (AML) rules, and the society had told the government that there should be a “level playing field” in terms of regulation across the professions.
The society would keep “expressing its opinions” on the issue of AML fines to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, where “changes were afoot” with the departure of chief executive Paul Philip later this year.
Mr Evans said it was “not necessarily a case of pressing a reset button” on the SRA, but the society wanted to look “positively to the future”.
As a teacher of property law and professional exams to students following a career as a conveyancer, he also said changes were needed to the Solicitors Qualifying Exam.
“There is a huge gap between what I’m teaching and what we need in practice.”
