Tp Legal

They were very helpful and clear at every stage, and dealt well with all the complications. We are very grateful to them.

Gross negligence in performing their duties by TP Legal Ltd. has deprived me and my family of fundamental property rights.

In a nutshell:
- When acting on behalf of the Buyer for property purchase, TP Legal Ltd. failed to spot the most common issue in a property sale: the Seller not having a registered title deed for the property they were selling. That is, TP Legal Ltd. acted with gross negligence in performing their conveyancing duties they had been paid for;
- TP Legal Ltd.'s gross negligence has had devastating impact on our finances;
- TP Legal Ltd. have misled us, for over 1 year, telling us that the delay in getting our title registered was due to backlog at HM Land Registry – when it was 100% due to Seller not being in the position to sell;
- TP Legal Ltd. have repeatedly taken money from us without providing proof of payment.

Here's how this situation unfolded...
On 20-May-2022 I completed the acquisition of a new-built property directly from the Builder. We exchanged contracts for the said property on 19-Dec-2021 – while the property was being built.

When making an offer to buy this property, in Oct-2021, we naively accepted Builder's recommendation for conveyancing services: TP Legal Ltd.

Ms. Janine Raine-Cooper was the Case Manager assigned to our case.
Throughout the conveyancing process, Ms. Raine-Cooper has done the Seller’s bidding, not ours (her customers). All our technical queries have been responded late, vaguely, by simply pointing us to a report so obviously copied & pasted from a previous case. She hasn’t once acted on our clarifications questions – which we had to take to the Builder directly, via the Sales office.

For their services, we have paid TP Legal Ltd. £1,915 as follows:
- £600 in Oct-2021, when we instructed them to act on our behalf (to this date, we still have seen no proof of this payment from TP Legal Ltd);
- £1,248 on 27-Dec-2022;
- £67 on 20-May-2022, the day of completion (again, no proof of payment provided).

At 10 months from the completion, in March 2023, we were still not in possession of our title deed because our Solicitor (TP Legal Ltd.) had failed to perform the most basic check: whether the Seller was indeed the legal owner of the item being sold. As it turns out, not only the Builder didn't have a title deed for the land, the individual who sold that land to the Builder didn't have one either. An unbelievable chain, of which TP Legal Ltd were not minimally aware (or interested in closing) when they asked money from us.

As a result of this situation:
- we've been - since March 2023 - unable to sell the property;
- also, we have been unable to re-mortgage the property, in order to let it out;
and move to a smaller/cheaper property, which we can afford to pay for.

Coming to an end of our fixed-term deal with the Lender, we have been forced to take the most expensive deal from the same Lender - which increased our monthly instalments by £1,200 (!!!)

All this because TP Legal Ltd (and Ms. Raine-Cooper) didn't do their job.

I escalated this situation to the Director of TP Legal Ltd. (Mr. Tariq Philips - "TP") on 31-Mar-2023. Mr. Philips answered almost 4 weeks later, on 26-Apr-2023 - pretending everything was fine and that Ms. Raine-Cooper "has worked diligently on your case and have been committed to resolving the issues related to your property registration". Despite mountains of evidence provided in my letter to him, Mr. Philips chose to cover up the negligence of his employee, Ms. Janine Raine-Cooper.

That's when I realised there's no chance for a resolution to my case - and decided to take legal action against TP Legal Ltd. A conveyancer who shouldn't be allowed to practice anymore - so that no other family is exposed to what we've gone through.