Wasting good money

Am I the only person brave enough - or foolhardy enough - to write to you regarding good leasehold title and the problems caused by practitioners having to comply with Council of Mortgage Lenders' (CML) requirements as to the same?I do appreciate that this merely mirrors good conveyancing practice as previously outlined in the Law Society's Conveyancing Handbook.

However, is it not time for good leasehold title to be accepted without the need for an expensive insurance policy where evidence of freehold is not available? The CML's recent amendment is invariably not accepted within the profession.

Our predecessors never seem to have had this problem.

In my area, the majority of leasehold titles tend to be good leasehold.

The leases are usually 50 to 150 years old, but I have yet to come across a case where the title has been challenged.

In fact, I doubt whether many practitioners in the country can claim to have come across such a problem.Nevertheless, we are constantly being involved in additional unpaid legal work as regards good leasehold title, and clients are being asked to stump up good money to insurance companies for policies that almost certainly will never be the subject of a claim.

Roger Bower, Bower Harris, Manchester