Conveyancing Complaints

Conveyancing failures sit in a difficult place in UK consumer law. The losses can be life-changing (uninhabitable property, missed completion, debt secured against a defective title), but the route to remedy is fragmented. The Legal Ombudsman handles service complaints with a one-year time limit. The Solicitors Regulation Authority handles regulatory misconduct on a different track. Professional negligence claims run in court at common-law limitation, sometimes extended for latent damage. Many consumers do not realise the issue until well after the firm has filed its papers and moved on, by which point the relevant deadlines are closer than they look.

This guide is for consumers who suspect their conveyancer (solicitor or licensed conveyancer) did not do the job properly. It covers the regulatory framework, the procedural sequencing, the SAR-before-complaint decision, and the limitation analysis. It also includes a case study from the EvenStance founder where the conveyancing failures took six years to surface and the limitation clock is still running on three parallel routes.

The regulatory framework

Three pieces of regulation and one piece of professional standards govern UK consumer conveyancing.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) scheme rules. The Legal Ombudsman handles service complaints about authorised legal services providers in England and Wales. A "service" complaint is about how the firm did the work, including delays, lack of communication, mishandled fees, missed deadlines, and failures to provide advice or to do what was agreed. The maximum binding award is £50,000 in compensation (uplifted from £30,000 in April 2022), plus unlimited fee reductions where the work was poor. The fee-reduction element is often more financially significant than the compensation cap; LeO can require the firm to refund the entire conveyancing fee and any related work.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA handles regulatory misconduct: dishonesty, conflict of interest, breach of the SRA Standards and Regulations or the Code of Conduct. The SRA does not award compensation to consumers, but a regulatory finding produces sanctions against the firm (fines, restrictions, strike-off) and the firm's compulsory indemnity insurance may then engage on a separate civil claim. The SRA's referral route runs parallel to the LeO; both can be open at the same time.

The Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS). Most UK conveyancing firms are CQS-accredited. The CQS Protocol sets out what a CQS-member firm must do on a conveyancing transaction, including pre-completion searches, the Building Regulation Completion Certificate check on new-build purchases, the Report on Title to the buyer, the warranty advice (NHBC Buildmark or equivalent), and the Certificate of Title to the lender. Departure from the Protocol is not strictly unlawful but is the easiest route to a service complaint at the LeO and to a negligence finding in court.

The Limitation Act 1980. Contract claims run for six years from breach under section 5. Tort claims (including professional negligence claims framed in tort) run for six years from the cause of action under section 2. Section 14A extends the limitation period for latent-damage cases to three years from the date of knowledge, with a fifteen-year longstop. For conveyancing matters where the failing is discovered years after completion, s.14A is often the operative provision.

When to use the LeO route, the SRA route, the court route

The right route depends on what went wrong and what remedy you want.

Use the Legal Ombudsman if:

The complaint is about service (delay, communication, missed deadline, poor advice, failure to follow instructions)

You want compensation up to £50,000 and/or a fee refund (which is uncapped)

You are within the one-year time limit from the act or omission complained of, or from the date you should reasonably have known about it (the post-April 2023 awareness rule)

You want a free, binding remedy without going to court

Use the Solicitors Regulation Authority if:

The complaint is about misconduct (dishonesty, conflict, breach of SRA Code of Conduct)

You believe the firm or an individual solicitor has acted improperly in a way that engages regulatory standards

You want the regulator to investigate and sanction; you are not seeking compensation through this route directly

Use court (professional negligence) if:

The financial loss exceeds the £50,000 LeO award limit (plus any fee refund)

The complaint is fundamentally about negligence (the firm fell below the standard of a reasonably competent conveyancer) rather than service

You are inside the Limitation Act limits (six years from breach under section 5; three years from date of knowledge under section 14A; fifteen-year longstop)

You can fund the litigation or have CFA-with-ATE-insurance arrangements in place

The three routes are not mutually exclusive. Many conveyancing complaints run the LeO route and the SRA route in parallel. A negligence claim in court may follow if the LeO award is insufficient, though the LeO will pause its process if court proceedings are issued on the same facts.

The Legal Ombudsman process

Before the LeO can investigate, you must give the firm a chance to resolve the complaint internally. The firm's complaints procedure is required by the SRA Code of Conduct and is usually a published document.

Write to the firm. Set out the facts, the failings, and the remedy you seek. The firm has up to eight weeks to respond.

Receive a final response, or wait eight weeks. Either triggers the LeO referral right.

Refer to the Legal Ombudsman. Online or by post. The referral is free.

LeO eligibility check. Confirms you are an eligible complainant and within the time limits.

LeO investigation. A case officer reviews evidence from both sides and issues a draft determination.

Final decision. Either party can accept or escalate to the Ombudsman for a final binding decision (binding on the firm; the consumer can reject and pursue court).

The LeO's published target for case resolution is six months from referral, though complex cases run longer.

The SAR-before-complaint sequencing decision

For conveyancing matters where the failing is not obvious from the consumer's own papers, the order in which you do things matters.

The conveyancing file held by the firm contains everything the firm did and did not do on your matter: the instructions taken, the searches commissioned, the contemporaneous attendance notes, internal emails between fee earners, the file review notes, the supervisor sign-offs, the post-completion checklists. Much of this is invisible to the client during the transaction. It becomes visible only via a Subject Access Request under Article 15 of the UK GDPR.

The sequencing decision is whether to:

(a) Complain first, SAR second. Send the formal complaint to the firm and wait for the Final Response Letter. If the FRL is unsatisfactory, then SAR the firm to look behind it. Advantages: faster start; the eight-week DISP-analogue clock runs in parallel. Disadvantages: you build the complaint on what you know; the firm's response shapes the SAR you eventually send.

(b) SAR first, complain second. Send the SAR to the firm and read the entire file before drafting the formal complaint. The complaint then incorporates contradictions between the firm's contemporaneous notes and its eventual customer-facing position. Advantages: the strongest possible complaint at first attempt; the firm has fewer ways to refuse engagement on specifics. Disadvantages: slower start; some firms slow-walk the SAR response.

(c) SAR and complain together. Send both letters on the same day. The firm's SAR response and the firm's complaint response then arrive in parallel. Advantages: speed and the strongest position; the firm cannot withhold material in the SAR response without that withholding becoming part of the complaint. Disadvantages: requires both letters drafted to the right specifications before either goes.

Option (c) is the right move where the complaint is substantial. In parallel, consider a SAR to the mortgage lender too: the Certificate of Title submitted by the conveyancer to the lender is held by the lender and often reveals what the conveyancer reported about the transaction at the point of completion. Inconsistencies between that and the client's own knowledge of the transaction are decisive.

Award limits and how the £50,000 LeO cap actually works

The £50,000 LeO cap is the compensation limit. The fee reduction element is uncapped. For a conveyancing matter where the fee was £2,500 and the LeO finds the work was substantially below standard, the LeO can require the firm to refund the entire £2,500 fee and award up to £50,000 in compensation on top, plus interest. For matters where the loss is well-defined (cost of obtaining a retrospective Completion Certificate, cost of remedial works, cost of independent inspections), the compensation award can match the loss up to the cap.

Losses above the £50,000 compensation cap need a court claim. Court awards are uncapped but bring cost-shifting risk above the small claims track.

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What this looks like in practice: a case from the EvenStance founder

I am preparing a Legal Ombudsman complaint, with a parallel Subject Access Request, against the buyer's solicitor for a new-build residential purchase that legally completed in late 2019. The property has been my father's home since completion. He has late-stage dementia and I act as his Court-appointed deputy for property and affairs.

The substantive failing is that the property completed without a Building Control Completion Certificate. The local Building Control office has confirmed, independently and in writing, that no Completion Certificate has ever been issued, six years after completion. The developer's own outstanding-items list, produced years later, confirms that six statutory commissioning certificates also remain undelivered: EPC, air permeability test, electrical installation certificate, gas commissioning certificate, ventilation extract commissioning certificate, and FENSA or CERTASS for the glazing.

The buyer's solicitor did not identify the absence of the Completion Certificate at completion. Did not take a retention from the developer's solicitor against later delivery. Did not obtain a personal undertaking from the developer. Did not advise the buyer to defer completion. Did not provide a Report on Title at any stage. Did not raise NHBC Buildmark warranty advice anywhere in the file: 150 deduplicated emails between buyer and firm, across all fee earners on the matter, contain zero mentions of "completion certificate", "building control", "building regulation", "NHBC", "Buildmark", or the relevant Buildmark policy number.

The boundary plan was modified between exchange and completion without notification to the buyer.

An independent surveyor's inspection two years after completion identified 30 Building Regulation breaches across 11 Approved Documents, nine of them critical to life safety (Parts A, B, J, K and P).

The closest single-category label from the conventional conveyancing-failure list is "missed lender requirement", because the lender's Certificate of Title was likely misreported. The fuller framing is a sustained CQS Protocol failure across multiple obligations at completion.

The date-of-knowledge analysis matters. I first identified the absence of the Completion Certificate, and the connection between that absence and the firm's CQS Protocol obligations, on 7th July 2025. That is the operative date for the Legal Ombudsman's one-year awareness rule under the post-April 2023 framework: the LeO referral window expires on 7th July 2026. The Section 14A latent-damage longstop for a court negligence claim runs until 7th July 2028.

The procedural plan is:

Subject Access Request to the firm for the complete conveyancing file, including all internal notes, file review notes, supervisor sign-offs, and correspondence with the developer's solicitor. Sent at the same time as the formal complaint.

Subject Access Request to the mortgage lender for the Certificate of Title and any related correspondence. Sent in parallel.

Formal complaint to the firm under its complaints procedure, requesting Final Response within the eight-week window.

Legal Ombudsman referral if the Final Response is unsatisfactory, on the £50,000 compensation cap plus full fee reduction.

Solicitors Regulation Authority report in parallel if the SAR responses confirm misreporting to the lender (a regulatory misconduct issue, separate from the service complaint at LeO).

Professional negligence claim held in reserve, framed in tort with the section 14A date-of-knowledge analysis as the limitation argument.

The case is at the SAR-and-complaint stage as at May 2026.

What that tells you

Three principles generalise.

First, the deadline that matters is the date of knowledge, not the date of completion. For conveyancing failings that surface years after the transaction, the Legal Ombudsman scheme's one-year awareness rule runs from the date the consumer should reasonably have known of the failing, not from the date the work was done. The section 14A latent-damage extension does the same for court negligence claims, with a fifteen-year longstop. Document when you first knew, and complain promptly once you have; the LeO will scrutinise the awareness date when the firm raises a time-bar argument.

Second, the file is the evidence. The customer's own emails and letters are a partial record; the firm's complete conveyancing file (internal attendance notes, file review notes, supervisor sign-offs, correspondence with other parties' solicitors, the Certificate of Title to the lender) is the full record. The SAR-and-complain pattern produces the full record at the time the formal complaint is open, which closes the firm's room to manoeuvre.

Third, the conveyancing-complaint architecture has three parallel routes (LeO for service, SRA for misconduct, court for negligence). They run on different timelines, with different remedies, and they are not mutually exclusive. Where the conduct is substantial and the loss is large, plan all three from the start rather than discovering them sequentially after the LeO route caps out.

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EvenStance Can Help

Frank's conveyancing flow drafts the formal complaint with the CQS Protocol references and the LeO scheme rules cited by section. The Subject Access Request flow generates the SAR to the firm and the parallel SAR to the lender simultaneously. The limitation tracker handles both the one-year LeO awareness rule and the section 14A latent-damage longstop. For matters where SRA misconduct is suspected, the platform's regulator-report template runs in parallel with the LeO complaint.

For complex cases with potential losses above the £50,000 LeO compensation cap, the platform's referral directory points at UK consumer-litigation solicitors who handle conveyancing professional negligence claims.