CIE releases an updated Climate Change Compliance Note for Members

The Conveyancing Information Executive (CIE) has further reinforced its guidance on climate change searches, following the Law Society of England & Wales publishing their practice note ‘Climate Change and Property’ on 12^th May 2025.

This practice note follows an initial piece of guidance, ‘The Impact of Climate Change on Solicitors’ which was published on 19th April 2023 and represents the Law Society’s view of good practice, in relation to climate change risks for property transactions.  

The CIE first published their Climate Change Searches Compliance Note in January 2023, taking an industry leading position in framing best practice within climate change conveyancing reports. 

Now the updated guidance has been released the CIE has updated their compliance note and aims to help bring clarity to a complex area of reporting and due-diligence. As Kevin Brown comments: ‘as the data standards authority for the conveyancing industry representing over 80% of the environmental reporting market, the Conveyancing Information Executive (CIE) welcomes any advancement in guidance designed to consider environmental risks more fully. However, there are still complexities which the industry plays a key role in simplifying and within the CIE we are proactive with this.’

From our position representing the major data suppliers in the conveyancing industry, there are some key facts and headlines around climate change searches which we would like to reaffirm and make clear:

• The practice note is the Law Society’s view of good practice, it is not a compliance note and it is not legal advice. The legal status of the practice note is available to review here.
• The practice note is not a mandate or explicit instruction that conveyancers must commission a standalone climate change search or an environmental search which includes climate risks, this remains optional.
• The list of physical climate change risks within the practice note are examples of physical impacts that might affect transactions. They are not a prescriptive list of the risks that must be included in a search.

In light of this, the practice note represents an opportunity for law firms to review their current reporting practices relating to climate change risks, but not a requirement to. Indeed, it will be ‘business as usual’ for large parts of the conveyancing industry who currently either include climate change risks already within their environmental reports supplied by CIE members, or who have made the decision to exclude climate change risks from their scope of works and client retainers. 

The only existing compliance requirement surrounding climate change in the conveyancing industry (to date) relates to the climate risk report providers. This is the updated CIE ‘Compliance Note: Climate Change’ which specifies the market leading standards to which climate change risk information provided by its members must meet. The CIE Compliance Note also extends beyond just data requirements; it specifies what support is required from the environmental report supplier more holistically. This support is critical given the growing complexities of climate change reporting. 

Our members must provide competent in-house support to any risks conveyed in climate risk(s) reporting and be on hand to support customers in accordance with service level agreements via members of their in-house teams. This in-house service and consultancy support is critical, as our members have objectively selected and curated the data upon which they deliver their insight and support. If you have any questions or concerns around what this latest publication means for you, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at: info@conveyinfoexec.com

The CIE welcomes membership applications from all organisations that support the UK’s conveyancing industry and adopt the highest industry data standards. For more information regarding membership, visit www.conveyinfoexec.com