The Conveyancing Task Force (CTF) has responded to a recent consultation on reforms to the home buying and selling process. While supporting the goal of a faster and more reliable system, the CTF said delays and additional costs are driven less by technology and more by structural, behavioural, regulatory, and accountability issues within the market.
The CTF highlights several key areas contributing to delays and consumer harm in the homebuying process:
+ Overlapping obligations such as anti-money laundering regulations and building safety legislation create unavoidable friction and cost.
+ Delays are caused by opaque lender panel practices, inconsistent instructions, and slow decision-making.
+ Delays in local authority searches, incomplete Land Registry data, and local authority failures to enforce planning obligations.
+ Lawtech providers shift liability for data accuracy onto consumers and property lawyers
+ Contradictory or outdated statutes create significant friction points.
The CTF argues that structural inefficiencies arise from public-sector delays, lender requirements, inconsistent enforcement, and legal and regulatory obligations. The Task Force asserts that technology is not a substitute for legal judgment and that digitalisation moves risk towards consumers without statutory liability. The CTF calls for reforms that address the causes of delay, not just the symptoms.
+ The CTF outlines several guiding principles for reform:
+ A national roll-out should occur only where empirical evidence shows reduced transaction time, lower fall-through rates, and reduced consumer cost.
+ Liability should sit with those who control the data.
+ Reforms must strengthen legal oversight, supervision, competency, and enforcement against misrepresentation and construction defects.
+ Digital tools should support practitioners but not replace legal scrutiny.
+ Reforms should be phased, compatible with regulatory frameworks, and supported by clear liability rules.
The CTF says it agrees with the objectives of improving speed, certainty, and consumer outcomes but does not agree with the diagnosis that digitisation is the central solution. The Task Force supports the overarching aims of improving speed, reducing abortive cost, and strengthening consumer protection but emphasises addressing structural, regulatory, and accountability failures.
The CTF makes several key recommendations:
+ Mandate lenders to publish objective, lawful, non-discriminatory lender panel criteria.
+ Reframe AML obligations so UK-regulated banks hold primary AML responsibility.
+ Introduce legal liabilities on lawtech businesses for the accuracy of the data they produce.
+ Prioritise investment in HMLR capacity before mandating digital logbooks.
+ Introduce statutory deadlines for local authority searches with enforceable consequences.
+ Require stronger supervision, competence standards, and regulatory oversight in high-volume hybrid firms.
+ Consult practicing property lawyers before legislating and avoid contradictory objectives.
The CTF concludes that the conveyancing system requires targeted, practitioner-led reform rather than wholesale, tech-driven restructuring.
