I found Brian Marson's letter, in which he admitted that he was one of those who advised on the opening up of the conveyancing markets, quite disturbing (see [2007] Gazette, 4 October, 14).


He claims that a decade ago, conveyancing in England and Wales was the slowest 'anywhere' and that 12 weeks to exchange was 'pretty much average'. Over the last 34 years, I have moved house more than a dozen times. The conveyancing rarely took longer than five or six weeks. I ran my own firm in Cornwall and I know that, from 1973 to 2001, delays such as Mr Marson describes happened infrequently. Most transactions were completed well within his 12 weeks to exchange.



To discover the way forward, Mr Marson went to Australia, Canada, the US, Scotland and Denmark. Perhaps he should have visited a few more countries. In the last three years, I have bought in France twice. Although the compromis (contract) can be signed quite quickly, it often takes two or three weeks, after which the buyer is entitled to a further seven-day cooling-off period. The time between the compromis and completion was three calendar months in the first transaction and somewhat longer in the second.



My enquiries lead me to understand that this is the normal time lag. This means that, even in those transactions where the compromis is signed within the first week, the time between the acceptance of the offer to buy and final completion will routinely be about 14 weeks. That is certainly longer than it has ever been in England and Wales during my professional life, which goes back to 1967.



It is perhaps now easier to understand why our government embarked upon so many reforms in health, education and the law, which resulted in chaos and no long-term benefits for patients, pupils or clients.



Peter Ryder, Middlewich, Cheshire