For UK conveyancing firms · MLR-2017 + Law Society
Environmental search + AML for UK conveyancers
Conveyancing transactions need both an environmental search (£25-£80 retail through Groundsure / Landmark / FCI) and an AML check on buyer + seller (£4-£8.50 retail through SmartSearch / Veriphy / Thirdfort). The current pain stack has you reconciling three vendor outputs into one client file plus chasing the parties for re-screening when the chain delays close. Stratum replaces all three with a single £19.95 transaction that returns one signed PDF: buyer + seller AML (sanctions + PEPs + adverse media + FCA Warning List), PSC walk for corporate parties, and the full S2 environmental risk pack (flood, radon, coal mining, contaminated land + landfill, knotweed) hash-bound for the conveyancer's matter file.
Whats in the £19.95 pack
The conveyancer-suite endpoint composes 8 capabilities: OFSI / UN / EU sanctions on buyer + seller, PEP screening via OpenSanctions, FCA Warning List clone-firm cross-check, PSC tree walk for corporate parties (with UBO screening at >=25% effective stake), Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea + Risk of Flooding from Surface Water + historical events register, UKHSA Radon Atlas band, Coal Authority Development High Risk Area point-in-polygon, contaminated land per-LA register adapter + EA national landfill register, and a Japanese knotweed proxy from INNS / iRecord aggregates. One PDF; one hash; one £19.95 charge.
How conveyancers use it
The /tools/conveyancer form on Certaby is the no-integration path: paste in buyer + seller details + the property postcode + your firm's matter reference, get back the signed PDF in 30-90 seconds. The API path drops into your case-management software (LEAP, Clio, ALB) for matter-level automation. Either way the cert hash binds the screening evidence to your file under MLR-2017's 7-year retention. Standalone tiers: £4.95 buyer-only ID + AML, £14.95 environmental-only (when the firm already has a separate AML stack), £39.95 Pro for SLA + named-contact support.
How we compete with Groundsure + Landmark
Groundsure / Landmark / Future Climate Info charge £25-£80 for the environmental search alone; we ship comparable depth across the 5 environmental capabilities at £14.95 standalone or £19.95 bundled with the AML check. We undercut by skipping the items the conveyancer doesn't need at early-stage flag (no chancel-repair, no commons-registration, no boundary search) — those are professional-search items added later in the transaction if and when needed. The S2 spec at /suites/conveyancer covers the full capability list + defer list.
Frequently asked
Is this a substitute for a full Groundsure search?
It's a fast first-pass at £14.95 environmental-only — useful for early-stage matter triage + low-risk transactions. For higher-risk or contentious matters where you need the full chancel/commons/boundary depth, Groundsure remains the right tool. Pair the two for matters above £500k; use ours alone for the bulk of transactions below that.
How fresh is the data?
Live: EA Real-Time Flood Monitoring API for current warnings. Quarterly refreshed: Coal Authority DHRA, EA RoFRaS bands. Static area lookups: UKHSA Radon Atlas (postcode area resolution), per-LA contaminated-land registers (top 50 LAs covered, expanding). All sources Crown-licensed under OGL v3.0 — no recurring data fee.
Does it work for corporate sellers (developers, landlords)?
Yes. The PSC tree walks the corporate seller to depth 5 + screens each UBO at >=25% effective stake. The cert cover printed names + matter reference for the audit trail.
What's not covered?
Title-deed history (HM Land Registry per-title, ~£3 per pull) is excluded from v1 per the cost-zero default. Multi-buyer / multi-seller transactions accept up to 2 per side; >2 deferred. Chancel-repair + commons-registration searches not included — these are professional-search items.
Is it MLR-2017 + Law Society compliant?
The cert covers the screening evidence MLR-2017 requires + the Law Society client-due-diligence rules expect. Hash-verifiable for inspection. 7-year retention TTL on the cert hash table matches MLR-2017.
Pro tier?
Pro at £39.95 mirrors the S1 Pro shape: priority queue + 99.95% SLA + named-contact support + on-demand deep refresh against OpenSanctions Match API + custom data sources on request.