The CLC publishes its routes to enforcement and report on activity in 2022

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) today (3 August 2023) publishes its routes to enforcement and report on activity in 2022, providing details how the CLC aims to achieve compliance, the various enforcement options available and what enforcement activity has taken place.

The introduction to the report follows:

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) is the specialist conveyancing and probate regulator. Everything we do is to deliver our fundamental purpose, which is the protection of the client and public interest. Our core functions are to:

      • Protect consumers
      • Ensure public trust and confidence in conveyancing and probate practitioners thereby ensuring their smooth functioning
      • Achieve our regulatory objectives – therefore meeting the mandate set out for the CLC in the 1985 Administration of Justice Act which created the new profession of Licensed Conveyancers to provide competition and choice in legal services
      • Provide a consumer-focused approach to the delivery of conveyancing and probate services

We do this through ensuring that:

      • The most ethical and advantageous outcome for the client is achieved
      • Our overriding principles are applied appropriately and consistently by individuals and practices
      • Our codes are followed

That laws pertinent to the legal transaction are adhered to by the individual or practice

Consumers, the general public and the regulated community want to see that any wrongdoing by individuals and practices regulated by the CLC is taken seriously and that appropriate enforcement and sanctions are applied.

CLC’s approach to its regulatory mandate is unique – in that we use an assisted or managed compliance model. The responsibility is always on the regulated professional to ensure that they are working in the best interests of their clients. CLC aims to have a regulatory framework that enables firms to deliver the best outcomes for those clients. It is agile and takes a forward look to how regulation needs to develop and not only keep pace but be in advance of change.

But we also aim, through assisted compliance, to prevent potential harm to consumers by identifying breaches of the rules and rectifying any problem before there is any consumer detriment.

The CLC will always try to work with regulated individuals and practices to ensure that they are compliant with the CLC principles, codes and associated laws. CLC practices, through this approach, recognise the benefit of frankness and candour – averting more severe action where there is a true wish to remediate and the agreement to a risk based, time bound plan to do so.

Of course, if there is persistent non-compliance or actual consumer harm occurs, then we have to move to our disciplinary tools to secure rapid compliance or to take steps to remove the risk to consumers by intervening in a practice or suspending or removing an individual licence. Whether we become aware of compliance failings through our monitoring of a practice or individual self reporting our first objective, wherever possible, is to agree a plan to achieve a swift return to compliance.

This is an approach to regulation that might be called ‘high-touch’ because of the close oversight of practices. However, it is both proportionate, risk-based and targeted while ensuring that practices are meeting the CLC’s expectations effectively.

If those we regulate are not open and cooperative with us, we will not be able to help them avoid consumer harm, and they will be much more likely to find themselves facing disciplinary action.

 

You can read the report in full here.

 

Kindly shared by Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC)

Main article photo courtesy of Pixabay