more brittle. One down valuation or survey surprise can ripple through four or five linked sales. 5. Leasehold and building safety complexity. Managing agents’ packs (LPE1), historic ground rent clauses, and post Grenfell fire safety documentation (EWS1 and equivalents) add specialist steps and long waits. Many buyer solicitors will not proceed without gold standard evidence. In addition to this complexity causing delay, it is increasingly far more likely for a leasehold property to form part of a high percentage of chains, given the numbers that have been built over the years and the frequency which people now move. 6. Capacity and business models. High volume “factory” conveyancing struggles with spiky workloads. Caseloads per fee earner remain high, so simple queries wait days. Meanwhile, better tech exists but remains siloed. Quality conveyancing solicitors priced out due to low cost “factory” business models. 7.The increase in the ‘compensation’ culture in the UK has prevailed since the 1970’s, when rightly or wrongly back then a ‘view’ might be taken on certain aspects during the conveyancing process.These days nobody wants to take that risk anymore.
production. Pilots show meaningful fall through reductions. • Service level targets where the state is the bottleneck. Publish and enforce SLAs for local searches and leasehold information packs, with fee caps and penalties for missed deadlines. • Mortgage portability. UK “porting” exists, but fees, timing, and affordability rechecks can derail it. Loosening early repayment charges on like for like moves and exploring limited assumable loans (as in parts of the US) would cut chain length and break rate lock paralysis. • Capacity and accountability in conveyancing. Encourage accreditation that caps active caseloads per fee earner; insist on proactive milestone reporting to all parties; promote collaborative platforms that log enquiries and responses transparently. • Finish the job on leasehold reform. Standardise LPE1 turnaround, limit charges, and accelerate the shift away from problematic ground rent structures; commonhold where feasible will remove a chronic source of delay. The direction of travel is clear: the UK has layered caution upon caution without knitting systems together.That is why 6–8 weeks has quietly become four or five months. Some of that caution is justified—but the duplication isn’t. The final word on policy is simple. Government intervention in housing, however well intentioned, can easily produce fresh problems—the HIPs episode proved as much. If ministers want to quicken sales, they should co design reforms with the people who live the process daily: estate agents, conveyancers, lenders, and local search officers. Listen first, legislate second, and aim for fewer, smarter steps—not more paperwork.
Government Intervention & A Cautionary Tale
The Labour government is making noises about overhauling the house sale process, but we encourage them not to repeat the bad history around HIPs (home Information Packs). When the last Labour government introduced Home Information Packs (HIPs) in 2007, the stated aim was to speed sales by front loading information. In practice, they often slowed the very start.Vendors couldn’t list until a pack was ordered; costs deterred some from testing the market. Once a buyer emerged, many solicitors representing those buyers were wary of relying on HIP contents—particularly if local searches were aging by the time a chain aligned—so duplicate searches were commissioned.Within three years HIPs were suspended, leaving only the EPC requirement.The lesson isn’t that upfront information is bad; it’s that poorly designed mandates, with no shared standards or portability, create new friction rather than removing old.
What would actually help?
• Genuine upfront information—done properly. Replace one off PDFs with digital property logbooks holding title, guarantees, planning history, and searches with clear validity windows. Make data machine readable and updateable, so buyer solicitors can consume rather than repeat. • Interoperable digital ID and source of funds.A government backed trust framework could let a single, high assurance KYC check be reused across agent, conveyancer and lender, cutting duplication and delay. • Binding reservation agreements. Light touch, time limited pacts (with cooling off and defined penalties) reduce gazundering/gazumping and create urgency for document
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