searching for clues

I read with great interest the letter from Graham Ireland (see [2000] Gazette, 7 September, 18).

As a firm we have taken the policy decision to carry out environmental searches on all purchases and remortgages rather than try to identify, without the appropriate expertise, whether or not there is any environmental risk on any individual transaction.

The result of the search contains information upon which, as solicitors, we are not qualified to comment.

It is therefore my practice always to send a copy of the search to the client with the suggestion that they consult their own surveyor if they have one and to send a further copy to the lender with the same suggestion.

So far I have not encountered any problems and lenders have reverted with instructions that they are satisfied and happy to proceed.

However, I suspect that as soon as I receive a search that throws up some potentially problematic results, the situation will be different.

Like Mr Ireland, I would not be prepared to give a clean report on title and I could foresee a position where a transaction would not proceed solely because of this point.

It has been my opinion, since the inception of the searches, that they should more properly be carried out by the surveyor as part of his remit, so that he can take it into account in providing his surveyors report.

However, because it is solicitors who carry out searches (and also because we are easy targets, being terrified of not doing something that might lead to allegations of negligence) it appears by default to have fallen to our part to deal with these searches.

This is something the Law Society should take up at a higher level with the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Chartered Surveyors' governing body in order to resolve this issue and to provide a clear guidance to practitioners.

Otherwise solicitors will be left in the position where they have to carry out the search in compliance with the very general duty they have under the lenders handbook, thus receiving a document on which they cannot advise.

Janet C Holland, Challenor Gardiner, Oxford