The age of the hidden defect

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As the UK housing stock ages, and planning regulation grows ever more convoluted, the number of transactions teetering on the edge due to legal defects has exploded. Conveyancers and solicitors, already stretched thin by compliance and client demands, are facing a surge in last-minute panic over things like restrictive covenants, lack of easements, or a lack of building regulation certificates. And here’s the kicker: many of these issues aren’t necessarily deal-breakers, but they are risk grenades. And lenders, particularly the high-street banks, do not like risk grenades.

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Take, for instance, the boom in leasehold properties. Years of government dithering over reform have left conveyancers in the firing line when a buyer realises their flat comes with a medieval style ground rent clause or a landlord who has disappeared without trace. The policy for an Absent Landlord, a niche product in Legal & Contingency’s portfolio, has gone from legal backwater to lifeline.

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Indemnity products quietly prop up the market

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Of course, you’d be forgiven for thinking legal indemnities are just a solicitor’s paperwork compulsion. But in practice, they are the enablers of modern property transactions. A decent Restrictive Covenant policy can turn a no-go house with a “no development” clause into a garden-office paradise. A Lack of Building Regulations policy is the only reason half the open-plan knock-throughs in Hackney are still mortgageable.

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Let’s be clear: no one wants to rely on legal indemnities. They are, after all, a workaround for things that ideally should have been resolved properly at the time. But the real world rarely operates like a Land Registry fairy tale. More often than not, indemnity insurance is the only practical way to keep transactions moving and lenders funding, particularly as councils navigate the underfunding and slow responses to local authority searches.

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Legal hurdles in the race to go green

A new generation of homeowners, motivated not only by rising energy costs, but by a genuine desire to live sustainably and appeal to an increasingly climate-conscious property market, has emerged. Driven by personal values, long-term cost savings, or resale appeal, more homeowners are looking to retrofit their properties with green upgrades: solar panels, heat pumps, EV charging ports, and more.

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But the legal framework governing the UK residential property isn’t always ready to support these ambitions. Green home improvements often run up against archaic covenants, restrictions, or a lack of clarity over access and easements. The smart meter installation might infringe a restrictive covenant from 1923. And that EV charging port on the side of the house needs building regulation sign-off, or a robust lack of building regulations policy to satisfy the lender.

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ESG is no longer just the preserve of corporate compliance teams, it’s becoming embedded in how people buy, sell, and future-proof their homes. Yet the legal infrastructure hasn't kept pace. Conveyancers increasingly find themselves navigating a growing divide: homeowners are pushing for greener homes, but legacy legal constraints are pulling in the opposite direction.

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Legal indemnity products are now part of that ESG toolkit, not because they solve climate change, but because they allow sustainable progress to happen within the constraints of a legacy legal systems. You can’t deliver net zero one extension at a time if the paperwork is holding up the mortgage offer.

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Is it a hack or is the system working?

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It’s tempting to see legal indemnities as duct tape for a broken conveyancing system. But in truth, they reflect how property law adapts to the unfixable. In a perfect world, every certificate would be present and correct, every covenant transparent, and every title squeaky clean. But here in the UK, where we build loft conversions on 17th-century deeds and buy houses whose ownership once passed through “Lord Something of Somewhere,” we have to deal with what’s in front of us.

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Legal indemnities are not a shortcut; they’re a safeguard. A mechanism for saying, “This shouldn’t stop the sale, and we have a rational way to manage the risk.” That’s not a loophole. That’s smart law.

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So, the next time someone tells you they’re buying a charming Victorian terrace with “a few quirks,” just know that somewhere, a conveyancer is quietly ticking the box for chancel repair liability. And thank goodness for that.