My wife and I are hoping to acquire a home in Bicester and are in fact using a Bicester conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our property lawyer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with a view to exchanging next week. National Westminster Bank have this afternoon contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Bicester conveyancer is not on their conveyancing panel. Please explain?

If you are buying a property needing a mortgage it is conventional for the purchasers' solicitors to also represent the purchaser's lender. In order to act for a bank or building society a law firm has to be on that lender's conveyancing panel. An application has to be made by the law firm to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the firm has to satisfy and indeed some lenders now require their panel members to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme. Your solicitor should contact your lender and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own solicitors to act. You don't have to instruct a firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Bicester solicitors, in which case your legal fees may increase, and it will likely delay the transaction as you are adding another lawyer into the mix.

The Bicester conveyancing lawyers that I appointed last week on my purchase in Bicester have suddenly shut down. They were on acting for me because I had to have a lawyer on the Co-operative conveyancing panel and my preferred Bicester lawyer was not. I sent them a cheque for £250 in advance. What should be my next steps?

If you have an estate agent involved then let them know immediately so that they advise the vendors that there may be a slight delay due to reasons beyond your control. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and urge their lawyer to send a new set of papers to your new solicitors. You will need to appoint new lawyers that are on the Co-operative conveyancing panel and notify the lender. If you have paid over any money, it will hopefully be held by the SRA as money in an intervened firm's bank accounts is transferred to the SRA. Then, the SRA or the intervention agent looks at the intervened firm's accounts to work out who the money belongs to. To claim your money you will need to contact the SRA. If the SRA cannot return money you are owed from the firm's bank accounts, or if they can only return part of the money, you can apply to the Compensation Fund for a grant. Your new lawyers may be able to assist.

What can a local search reveal regarding the house we're purchasing in Bicester?

Bicester conveyancing often starts with the ordering local authority searches directly from your local Authority or through a personal search organisations such as PSG The local search is essential in every Bicester conveyancing purchase; as long as you don’t want any nasty surprises after you move into your new home. The search should provide data on, amongst other things, details on planning applications relevant to the property (whether granted or refused), building control history, any enforcement action, restrictions on permitted development, nearby road schemes, contaminated land and radon gas; in all a total of 13 topic areas.

I am buying a new build flat in Bicester. Conveyancing is a frightening process at the best of times but I have never purchased a new build flat before. What sort of enquires would be asked in new build legal work.

Set out below is a sample of a selection of leasehold new build enquiries that you should expect your new-build leasehold conveyancing in Bicester

The Landlord must covenant to assume the management if the Management Company goes into liquidation or otherwise defaults in running the management scheme. Has the Lease plan been approved by the Land Registry and if not when will they be lodged for this purpose? Will control of the Management Company (if any) be handed over to purchasers on completion of the last sale or earlier? The Vendor must covenant to keep unsold units in good repair until long leases are granted therefore.

To what extent are Bicester conveyancing solicitors duty bound by the Law Society to publish transparent conveyancing costs?

Contained within the Solicitors Code of Conduct are prescriptive rules and regulations as to how the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) allow solicitors to publicise their fees to clients.The Law Society have practice note giving advice on how to publicise transparent charges to avoid breaching any such rule. Practice notes are not legal advice issued by the Law Society and is not intended as the only standard of good practice a conveyancing solicitor should adhere to. The Practice Note does, nevertheless, represent the Law Society’s view of acceptable practice for publicising conveyancing charges, and accordingly it’s a recommended read for any solicitor or conveyancer in Bicester or across England and Wales.