LSEW writes off £3m+ as conveyancing portal scrapped

The Law Society of England & Wales has pulled the plug on an online conveyancing portal into which it has invested well over £3m of its members' money over the past two years.

Veyo, which was developed in a joint venture with Indian software company Mastek, was intended to provide a secure online environment for conveyancers, integrated with Land Registry and HMRC. It was originally supposed to launch earlier this year, and was even being advertised at the England v Wales Six Nations rugby international. But it was criticised for overlap with firms' existing case management systems while imposing additional costs, and several months of delays, said to be due to the need for further testing, have now been followed by a statement from LSEW that announced “with considerable regret” that the Society would not be making any further investment in Veyo.

It continued: “Other software providers operating in the conveyancing market are responding to our members' needs and so we have decided to step back. We are committed to identifying unmet member need and innovation, but on this occasion we also have recognised the reality that the market has developed significantly since we started to develop Veyo and that the costs of continuing outweigh the benefit to our members.”

Other providers have since committed to bring free products to market within case management software to deliver e-conveyancing.

LSEW added: “We are deeply sorry that those who have waited patiently for the Veyo conveyancing portal from our joint venture will not now be able to use it.

“We knew that the project carried risk, as all technological innovations do. Unfortunately it is no longer in our members' interests to invest resources to make a product of the high quality our members expect and deserve.

“The timetable for getting Veyo to market was, in retrospect, overambitious. We have made the very difficult decision not to invest further in light of developments in the market which mean that case management providers are likely to meet our members' needs at no additional cost.”

LSEW said it welcomed any development which meant that conveyancing could be done more effectively.

Members are likely to challenge LSEW on why the decision to scrap the project was not taken sooner, especially once the full cost is revealed with publication of the 2014-15 accounts. The chief executive of myhomehove, the biggest conveyancing firm, predicted in May this year that the project would fail.