Legal Ombudsman and CQS

The Law Society’s new home buyer quality mark, the Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS), has received the backing of the Legal Ombudsman in their commitment to ‘drive up standards in the home buying market’, which fluctuate, often correlating with whether the service provider is regulated or unregulated. Furley Page, regulated by the Law Society, was one of the first law firm’s in the South East to receive the CQS accreditation after successfully undergoing the rigorous assessment procedure. The scheme requires practices to undergo an assessment, compulsory training, self-reporting, random audits and annual reviews.  See our web page for full details of the scheme.

The Legal Ombudsman was appointed in October 2010 and can only act on complaints from those using the services of qualified lawyers. Of all the cases investigated by the Legal Ombudsman one in five concerned residential conveyancing. The Legal Ombudsman is unable to help if cases have been dealt with by unregulated providers leaving customers with little means of redress when things go wrong.

The gap in regulation allows unregulated providers, who have no legal qualifications whatsoever and who are not therefore regulated by anyone, to operate in areas such as residential conveyancing.  This exposes customers as these unregulated providers are unlikely to be insured, do not provide a compensation fund and are not covered by the Legal Ombudsman’s scheme for customer redress. Customers are typically unaware of this fact and often believe that the unregulated providers are legal firms.

Chief Ombudsman, Adam Sampson, has called on the government to take urgent action to make sure consumers are not left confused and vulnerable by unregulated companies.

Furley Page provides regulated services to high professional standards.  House-buyers who use Furley Page have the peace of mind of knowing they will receive a reliable, efficient service as recognised by the CQS standard.