My Suggestions for Responding to the Material Information in Property Listings Consultation, by Stephen Desmond
Responses due by 29th December 2025

The government has published a consultation on Material Information in Property Listings, which contains proposals that have seemingly been shaped by a relatively narrow set of stakeholders. As with the fifth (2024) edition of the TA6, practising conveyancers have not yet had a meaningful opportunity to influence these proposals.

This article is intended to set out practical suggestions and key considerations for conveyancers responding to the consultation. While you may choose to answer as many or as few questions as you feel able to, it is important that as many conveyancers as possible respond. The goal is to prevent any new guidance from inadvertently recreating the problems of the fifth edition TA6, which contained 32 pages of largely unnecessary “material information” enquiries.

In the sections below, I highlight many practical realities, risks, and legal complexities that should be brought to the government’s attention.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own provisional opinions and analysis. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice, and it is not intended to provide a comprehensive statement of the law. For the avoidance of doubt, this article is not a reproduction of, and should not be taken as, any representations I may submit in response to the consultation

How to Access the Consultation and Provide Your Response

Top Tip: Even partial responses are valuable — the key is for as many conveyancers as possible to engage before the closing date of 29th December 2025.

Comprehensive Summary: Key Factors and Concerns Regarding “Material Information” in Property Transactions

  1. Competence, delegation and the risk of misrepresentation

If the responsibility for compiling or presenting “material information” is delegated to estate agents, there is a real risk of inadvertent misrepresentation, omission, or misunderstanding.

Estate agents are not trained to interpret deeds and other aspects of legal title, and I fear that some agents may instruct low-cost suppliers to simply compile unverified information from multiple databases without legal context or interpretation.

This is not to suggest that every data provider is incompetent or cost-driven — many are reputable and operate with care within the legal sector.

Ultimately, estate agents cannot reliably assess conveyancer competence, and commercial incentives can unintentionally override the consumer’s best interests.

However, a system that allows legal information to be generated or published without professional interpretation invites inconsistency, thereby shifting risk onto consumers and conveyancers.

  1. The limits of “material information” for consumers

The government’s concept of “material information” assumes an average consumer capable of understanding complex legal and technical data.

In reality, no such “average” exists in property law. The average consumer test itself (drawn from EU consumer law origins) recognises that specialist legal knowledge lies outside its scope.

Legal title — including leases, conveyances and transfers — often involve dense, context-specific information that even experienced practitioners might interpret differently. Title documents are legal constructs, not physical or transactional facts accessible to an “average consumer.”

Buyers cannot be expected to digest raw legal data without the assistance of a conveyancer. Most buyers need filtered, practical advice — not vast quantities of uncontextualised information.

Materiality in a property transaction should ultimately be assessed by the buyer’s conveyancer, who reviews the title and reports any issues to the client. The buyer then decides, taking that advice into account, whether to proceed with the purchase.

What is “material” in one transaction may be immaterial in another, depending on the buyer’s purpose, the lender’s conditions and the property’s characteristics.

  1. Status and Authority of Material Information Guidance

Government or CMA guidance on “material information” must be read only as interpretative or enforcement guidance — not as a delegated or binding redefinition of statutory law. While courts may give regulatory guidance some weight, it cannot override the statute or the established professional standards developed over many years, e.g. by the Law Society.

  1. Conflicts of interest and referral fees

Placing responsibility with estate agents risks creating perverse incentives: some agents may prioritise data providers or firms that pay the highest referral fee or offer the lowest cost to the seller, rather than those offering the most competent or reliable service. This can lead to speed and cost being valued above accuracy and quality, potentially compromising the information provided to buyers — though I am not suggesting that all firms that pay referral fees necessarily provide a poor service.

  1. Practical and procedural limitations

Sellers can only provide information based on their actual knowledge and documentation to hand.

Even when sellers are well-intentioned, they may lack the records or technical understanding to answer questions fully or accurately.

If estate agents are relied upon to compile such data, accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed fully.

Moreover, in leasehold sales, sellers must often complete both the TA6 and TA7 forms, each of which can take many hours and require detailed input.

The soon-to-be-abandoned fifth edition of the TA6 illustrated how excessive questioning creates frustration and delays, rather than improving disclosure.

  1. Causes of transaction failure and limits of verification

The most common causes of delay or failure in property transactions are legal and procedural, not informational. These include: title defects, unadopted roads, missing consents, restrictive covenants, service-charge disputes, defective leases and complex rentcharges.

Mortgage lenders’ varying and evolving Part 2 requirements add further complexity and delay.

Even experienced conveyancers cannot independently verify all data supplied by third parties, such as local authorities, managing agents, or even clients. They must rely on those sources acting competently and accurately.

  1. Complexity of legal titles

Each title is unique — ranging from straightforward freeholds to highly complex leasehold or mixed-use titles that can take weeks to resolve or repair before they can be considered good and marketable.

Leasehold problems typically include unclear repairing obligations, missing consents, poorly drafted service-charge clauses, or ambiguous definitions of common parts.

Determining whether a title is good and marketable is a task only a qualified conveyancer can perform.

Materiality is equally context-driven. Even experienced conveyancers may differ on what is material, depending on the client’s purpose or lender’s stance. The idea that such judgments can be reduced to standardised criteria is unrealistic.

  1. Oversight, enforcement and professional responsibility

Bodies like the Competition and Markets Authority or National Trading Standards lack the expertise to interpret what information is material in the conveyancing context.

Conveyancers operate under strict professional codes and legal duties that already ensure accuracy, due diligence and client protection.

Any new regulatory overlay risks duplication, confusion and the blurring of professional boundaries between estate agents and conveyancers.

  1. Process complexity and market pressures

Conveyancing has become vastly more data-heavy over the past 25–30 years. Environmental and planning searches, lender requirements and anti-money-laundering compliance have multiplied the paperwork and data that needs processing.

Consequently, conveyancers, often working for fixed fees, now handle far more information without proportional remuneration.

Lenders generally do not pay conveyancers directly, yet impose extensive and ever-changing obligations through the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook.

Expecting estate agents to handle “material information” adds yet another layer of duplication and risk.

  1. Misplaced assumptions about timing and completeness

At the property-listing stage, buyers make enquiries subject to contract. Any “material information” disclosed at that point is necessarily incomplete and could be misinterpreted as final or definitive.

Front-loading complex legal data risks giving buyers a false sense of certainty, resulting in extra work for the buyer’s conveyancer, and leading to disputes about whether later-disclosed issues were ‘withheld

  1. Professional engagement and representation

The Law Society’s handling of the TA6 consultation (with more than 1,200 practitioner responses) showed the strength of professional engagement and the clear consensus that the fifth edition’s “material information” approach was excessive and counterproductive.

The Law Society is the appropriate authority to formulate and maintain standard property information forms such as the TA6 and TA7. Any attempt to bypass or duplicate that process through unendorsed, untested third-party enquiry forms would risk creating confusion, inconsistency, and a lack of professional accountability.

Future reform must therefore be driven by experienced individual conveyancers, not just representative bodies or external stakeholder groups whose expertise lies outside daily conveyancing work.

  1. Constructive reform priorities

If the government genuinely wishes to improve the home-moving process, it should focus on simplifying and streamlining existing systems rather than redefining materiality.

Constructive areas for reform include:

  • Rationalising and simplifying lender Part 2 requirements
  • Reducing AML and source-of-funds burdens
  • Improving consistency of local authority search turnaround times
  • Supporting better communication between conveyancers, lenders and agents, rather than shifting responsibilities between them

Overall message

The idea of “material information” may be well-intentioned, but in practice it risks oversimplifying legal complexity, duplicating work, and confusing consumers.

The conveyancing process already includes established procedures — notably the TA6 and TA7 forms, and regulatory oversight of qualified professionals — to ensure buyers receive the information that truly matters.

What is needed now is not more prescriptive data or delegation to unqualified intermediaries, but a focus on competence, clarity and genuine process improvement.