The Law Society should be the ‘pathfinder’ in developing systems to computerise the process of buying and selling properties, the chairman of the Society’s conveyancing and land law committee said last week.

Richard Barnett, who is also senior partner at volume firm Barnetts, told the annual property section conference that clients expect internet communication and solicitors could not be seen to be out of date.

‘Jumping from paper to the internet is a scary prospect for some, but because of the enormous benefits, I thinks it’s worth doing,’ he said. If the Law Society does not provide a solution, Barnett believes there are others in the market who will.

In December, the Land Registry revealed that it had put on hold the most ambitious components of its e-conveyancing programme, the ‘chain matrix’ and electronic funds transfer.

Grant Shapps, shadow housing minister, called on the government to use existing legislative powers to suspend home information packs in the ‘exceptional circumstances’ of the current economic climate.

He confirmed that if the Conservatives won the next election they would scrap the controversial sellers packs, which housing minister Margaret Beckett admitted to the Commons Local Government Committee last week were ‘not working to the potential they could’.

Shapps gave no indication of when his party’s delayed home-buying review would be published, but said: ‘There is not a single silver bullet that would revolutionise the home buying and selling process. We’ll need to change things gradually over time in a series of ways.’