Property

Leading conveyancing firm O’Neill Patient – which was last year bought by a private equity firm – has acquired Cavendish Legal Group, the first of what it says will be “a number of acquisitions”.

A solicitor who failed to advise on the “obvious risks” of four off-plan property development schemes has been fined £10,000. His advice was “so inadequate as to be incompetent”.

Employment and commercial work are seeing the biggest increases in demand from clients, research has found. However, lockdown has had a “devastating impact” on other practice areas.

The property logbook is the next initiative to be investigated as part of work to speed up the home-moving process, although lockdown has hit other projects.

Speeding up the process of property buying and selling has taken on new urgency following the conveyancing market meltdown due to Covid-19.

Consumers are more worried about the fee conveyancers charge to transfer their money than the risk of it being stolen, research has found at the same time that a solicitor is jailed for fraud.

Five bodies representing conveyancers have joined forces to issue detailed guidance to support the re-opening of the housing market while complying with social distancing.

It is difficult to imagine a “more obvious breach of duty” by a conveyancing solicitor than failing to register its new owner, the High Court has said in a case where it had “disastrous consequences”.

Conveyancers and other property stakeholders have called on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to allow them to move staff in and out of furlough on a weekly basis as the home-moving market recovers.

Conveyancers, estate agents and others involved in the home-moving process can return to work today in line with social distancing advice, the government announced last night.