The CA May meetings – a chance to share and learn together

Despite an extraordinary amount of rain in the last few weeks, Spring is definitely with us, and we are just a few days away from the month of May, which is traditionally a strong period for the housing market.

I’m not sure if there is ever a day/week/month which is not busy for conveyancing firms, and I sincerely hope you are working through strong business volumes and you are overcoming the many challenges that come with working in this sector.

We, of course, at the CA are here to help and support you in those endeavours, especially in areas which can seem particularly complex and in which there are a great deal of myths or misinformation doing the rounds.

In that regard, I wanted to highlight our recently published Guidance document for conveyancing firms which focuses on the new Building Safety Act and Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England).

It’s fair to say there has been a lot of ‘noise’ about this, and from conversations I’ve had, this is in no way an easy area to manage on behalf of clients. Not least because this is a work in progress, the legislation has yet to be tried in court and until it is, there is going to be a level of unknowability about how this might play out in practice.

Hopefully, the Guidance can give you a greater level of insight into this and what you need to consider as a conveyancing firm dealing with such cases. We’ve tried to set out the main issues and dispel some of the myths that have been coming up frequently and it is now available to download from here.

May is a big month for the Association and I want to draw your attention to our series of meetings which take place on the 15^{th of} May – once again kindly hosted by Howden at their offices in London.

These are an important series of meetings not least because we will be holding the CA’s AGM, as well as our Legal Members’ Meeting and also our All-Members’ Meeting.

It is therefore a packed day of sessions, and we would certainly like as many of you as possible to attend.

A big focus for the day, and taking place during our Legal Member meeting, will be our first Lender Engagement Workshop. You’ll recall that one of the big takeaways when we asked member firms what they would like to see more of, was the CA facilitating greater levels of lender engagement and this is one of the first steps in delivering on that.

Meeting delegates will be split into groups to debate various issues, and then we’ll feed back to everyone, but also put specific points via a Panel Q&A which will include representatives from both LMS and the Lender Exchange.

We have a series of questions we’d like to put to member firms about their existing relationships with lenders, what works, what could be better, and where there is an opportunity to communicate and develop the relationship to get better outcomes. And then we’ll have a good honest debate about what we can do in practice to deliver on this.

I also wanted to highlight a workshop session taking place within our All Members’ Meeting entitled, ‘Future Vision for Digital Conveyancing, Material Information and a Consumer Centric Home Moving Process’ where we’ll be discussing recent progress made in this area, what it will mean for conveyancing firms, and how this will really shape the future of the sector.

Anyone who attended our Conference will know just what is at stake here, and we therefore want this to be an outcome-focused workshop that will provide some tangible solutions for firms to deal with all these issues.

There will be much more besides this of course, and this is your chance to learn what we’ve been doing as your trade association, to be made aware of a range of subjects and issues shaping the conveyancing landscape, and of course to network with colleagues and peers to share your collective expertise and knowledge.

You can sign up to attend on the 15^th May by visiting the link here, and we’re all looking forward to bringing together our membership and stakeholders in London next month. See you there.

Nicky Heathcote is Non-Executive Chair at the Conveyancing Association (CA)