A conveyancing giant that handles a quarter of a million conveyancing instructions a year has announced potential redundancies due to a slow down in the housing market.

Simplify describes itself as the UK’s leading independent conveyancing and property services group. Its nine businesses include six of the largest conveyancing firms in the UK: Advantage Property Lawyers, Cook Taylor Woodhouse, DC Law, Gordon Brown Law, JS Law and Premier Property Lawyers.

A spokesperson said: ‘In the context of a widely reported significant slowdown in the housing market, which is expected to continue next year, we have sadly needed to put a number of roles within central, support and management teams at risk of redundancy. We will be supporting those colleagues, whose roles are at risk, through the consultation process over the coming weeks.

‘While we can’t comment on specific numbers, firms or timings during the consultation process, those at risk of redundancy represent less than 5% of the total workforce and not all firms are impacted.’

Simplify’s workforce comprises 2,000 people across 13 sites.

Last year, Simplify suffered a IT systems outage due to a ‘security incident’. It later emerged that an unauthorised third party had temporarily gained access to a part of its computer systems, relating to certain internal Simplify files and some of those files contained personal data.

To boost the housing market, Jeremy Hunt, chancellor of the exchequer, announced in last month’s autumn statement that stamp duty land tax concessions would remain in place until 31 March 2025.

 

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