Equitable Charge

Land_Registry

DE_612183 said:

The issue lies with the two solicitors - who now can't be accountable for it - one failed to do their job properly, the other failed to check the job was done. You could I suppose try the Law Society - after all two of their former members have failed in their duty - they may have a fund to cover things like this where members no longer in circulation have cocked up.

It might be the SRA you contact initially - SRA | What to do if a firm has closed | Solicitors Regulation Authority to get assistance/advice as appropriate 

Yorkie1

The seller's solicitor has essentially given a professional undertaking that the charge would be cleared from the sale proceeds before the balance was passed onto the sellers, and that the solicitor would do the necessary work to remove the charge from the LR paperwork.

Your solicitor should, as part of their professional responsibility to you, have ensured that that happened.

Both firms of solicitors appear to potentially be at fault.

As the LR representative indicates, I would suggest the SRA. It's also possible that the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) might also be relevant, but they only tend to get involved if you have exhausted the firm's complaints process first - which you can't as the firms no longer exist.

The SRA has a complaints fund which does have the power to award compensation (although I'm not sure of the details).

sofrustratedinderby

Just another thing to add to the mess, looking at our solicitors paperwork and the sellers solicitors, it appears the are they same company. Is this allowed or a conflict of interest? I know when we had to find a solicitor to deal with having a name removed from the mortgage, we were told that we were not allowed to use the same company as each other.