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A sports organisation which holds land for re
creational purposes, will have a statutory right
to renew its tenancy, provided it has held the
land under lease for at least 25 years, or has occu
pied the land for 25 out of the last 40 years, and
provided it has spent 15
times the rent or a
minimum of £1,000 on the lands.
Right extended
The right to purchase the fee simple is extended
to these new classes. Another improvement is that
the right extended in the Ground Rents Act of
three years ago to buy out the fee simple is being
cut from leases of 99 years to leases of 50 years or
more.
Tenants of vacant building land in towns have
now the right to buy the fee simple on the same
terms as apply to ground rent leases—provided
they secure planning permission.
Due account must now be taken of improve
ments made by the tenant when fixing the new
rent when a ground-rent lease is renewed.
NEED FOR CHEAPER CONVEYANCING
URGED
The legal costs of moving house are too high,
according to the consumer magazine Which ? A
report published says the conveyancing system is
in need of urgent revision to fit the needs of
present-day house-ownership.
Members of Which ? complained that convey
ancing took too long and cost too much. Not
enough information was available to them during
the process. The report says these difficulties are
the fault of the system rather than of individual
solicitors.
The Law Society last night said the report was
fair, and welcomed the fact that it had not blamed
solicitors.
The prices and
incomes board has
recom
mended
that although solicitors' conveyancing
charges for houses below £2,000 are unprofitable
and should be raised, fees for properties above
£4,000 should be cut by 6 per cent. The Govern
ment has accepted the proposals but they have
yet to be implemented.
The Which ? report considers the conveyancing
provided by the National House Owners' Society,
which has been convicted several times for break
ing the solicitors' conveyancing monopoly. An
action by the Law Society is now pending against
the N.H.O.S.
It is illegal for anyone other than a lawyer
or owner to do conveyancing work unless he
can prove that he did not do it for gain. The
Which ?
report concludes that: " you will get
the best conveyancing from a good solicitor",
although with a straightforward conveyance the
N.H.O.S. " may have been doing a good job at
half the cost".
Mr. Basil Blower, chairman of the N.H.O.S.,
'said last night that the original draft of the
Which ? report had recommended their conveyan
cing as being as good as that provided by solicitors.
The Consumers' Association, publishers of
Which ?, replied that the draft represented only
their preliminary views, which were modified after
further research.
The N.H.O.S., which has over 10,000 members,
claims to have saved them £150,000 in about 7,000
conveyances.
The price of a house is not necessarily a guide to
the final bill which a client could receive, accord
ing to the Which ? report. Some solicitors made
extra charges, and others gave reductions, occa
sionally on the conveyancing scale fee.
Three-quarters of the conveyances examined by
Which ? had taken over two months, and one in
25 took more than six months.
Some people complained about lack of infor
mation from their solicitors, and were dismayed to
find that problems arose after moving in which
should have been cleared up beforehand. The
report blames the system which limits what a soli
citor may be able to discover about boundaries
and developments.
Which ? advises a buyer of a new house against
sharing a solicitor with the seller, as it is important
to have advice independent of the builder.
LAWYER COMPLAINT COMMITTEES
Improved machinery to ensure that complaints
against lawyers are properly and quickly investi
gated is proposed by the lawyers' reform group,
Justice, in a report today.
A committee of barristers, solicitors and three
non-lawyers, after studying the problem for five
years, recommended the setting up of local com
plaint committees, organised by local law societies
but with lay chairmen and barristers as members.
They would investigate complaints against both
branches of the profession and after eliminating
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