CQS 2026 Update: What Conveyancing Firms Need to Know

If your firm handles residential conveyancing, clients and lenders increasingly expect one thing before they'll instruct you: CQS accreditation. The Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme is now the default quality mark for residential conveyancing practices in England and Wales, and staying accredited means staying on top of an evolving set of standards, training obligations and protocol requirements. This guide sets out what CQS accreditation actually involves, how membership and reaccreditation work, the core standards you're assessed against, and what's changing for firms heading into 2026 — with a note on where to check for the latest scheme updates directly. Keeping your team's knowledge current here is also a good candidate for your firm's ongoing CPD for legal professionals, since CQS compliance touches risk, client care and practice management all at once.

What CQS Is, and Why Lenders and Clients Favour Accredited Firms

The Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) is a Law Society accreditation for SRA-regulated firms that carry out residential conveyancing. It exists to raise and standardise the quality of conveyancing services across the profession, and to give lenders, consumers and other stakeholders a recognisable mark of competence, sound risk management and reliable client care.

In practice, CQS accreditation has become close to a commercial necessity for firms that want a healthy conveyancing caseload. A number of major mortgage lenders operate closed or preferred conveyancing panels, and CQS membership is commonly a condition — or a strong practical advantage — for getting onto and staying on those panels. Referral partners, estate agents and increasingly clients themselves also treat CQS as a shorthand for "this firm has been independently checked." For a firm, losing accreditation can mean losing panel access and referral work almost overnight, which is why reaccreditation deadlines and training obligations need to be tracked as carefully as any other compliance calendar item.

CQS also plays a specific role in the profession's fight against property fraud and money laundering — two risk areas conveyancing is particularly exposed to given the sums of money that move through client accounts on every transaction. Firms preparing new joiners or refreshing existing fee earners should also see our related guide on residential conveyancing risk and fraud prevention for the practical controls that sit alongside CQS membership.

How CQS Membership and Reaccreditation Work

Accreditation is not a one-off badge. A CQS certificate runs on a renewal cycle, and firms need to plan for both the administrative steps and the substantive assessment that reaccreditation involves. The core elements are:

• A Senior Responsible Officer (SRO). Every accredited firm must appoint an SRO who takes ownership of CQS compliance for the practice and must pass the Law Society's CQS certification assessment covering probity, quality and practice management knowledge.
• Training for "Relevant Persons." Fee earners and support staff who work on conveyancing files (Relevant Persons) must complete the required CQS training within a set window of the firm gaining or renewing accreditation, and firms need to keep evidence of who has completed it.
• Initial and ongoing assessment. New applicants go through a more rigorous initial assessment; accredited firms are then subject to a mix of annual renewal declarations, desk-based reviews and periodic on-site or independent assessor visits to confirm the practice is still meeting the standards.
• Renewal timing. Firms can typically apply to renew in the weeks before their certificate expires, so building the renewal date into your compliance diary — well before it lapses — avoids any gap in accreditation.
• Fees. The Law Society charges an application fee (which varies with firm size), plus smaller fees for services such as reissuing a certificate or extending accreditation, and an appeal fee if an application for accreditation is refused. Because fee levels are reviewed periodically, firms should confirm the current schedule directly on the Law Society's CQS pages rather than relying on a figure quoted elsewhere.

Because SRO sign-off, training records and audit evidence all depend on people actually completing what's required, many firms fold CQS training into their wider learning and development programme rather than treating it as a separate, one-off exercise.

The CQS Protocol: Six Stages of a Compliant Transaction

Alongside the accreditation itself, CQS firms are expected to follow the Law Society's Conveyancing Protocol, which sets out good practice across the lifecycle of a straightforward residential freehold or leasehold transaction. The Protocol is generally structured around six stages:

• Instructions — taking clear instructions, verifying identity and source of funds, and opening the file with the right client care and risk checks in place.
• Pre-exchange — raising and answering enquiries, reviewing title and searches, and identifying anything that needs to be resolved before the transaction can proceed.
• Prior to exchange — confirming the parties are ready: mortgage offer in place, searches satisfactory, report on title sent and understood by the client.
• Exchange of contracts — following a consistent, documented process for exchanging contracts and agreeing a completion date.
• Completion — transferring funds correctly (a key fraud risk point), registering the transaction, and meeting undertakings given to the other side or to lenders.
• Post-completion — dealing with Stamp Duty Land Tax or Land Transaction Tax, registration at the Land Registry, and closing the file properly.

Undertakings given at exchange and completion — to redeem a mortgage, to hold a deposit as agent, or to release funds against a promise from the other side — are one of the highest-risk points in this cycle if they're mismanaged. If undertakings practice isn't already covered in your firm's induction and refresher training, our guide to undertakings risk and compliance for solicitors is a useful companion to the CQS Protocol stages above.

Core Practice Management Standards (CPMS)

Where the Protocol governs how a transaction runs, the Core Practice Management Standards (CPMS) govern how the firm behind it is run. CQS assessment maps against seven CPMS areas:

Auditors and assessors use these standards as the backbone of both the initial accreditation assessment and any subsequent review, so a firm's policies, precedents and file notes should visibly map back to each of the seven areas rather than existing as a generic compliance manual gathering dust.

What's Changing for CQS Firms in 2026

The Law Society keeps CQS training and guidance under regular review, and firms should always check the current CQS pages on lawsociety.org.uk before a reaccreditation cycle rather than relying on last year's notes. Two developments are worth flagging specifically for 2026:

• New TA6 and TA7 property forms become mandatory from 30 March 2026. The Law Society has published the TA6 Property Information Form (6th edition) and an updated TA7 Leasehold Information Form, following a consultation with residential conveyancers. The previous editions remain usable up to that date, after which the new versions must be used. Because these forms sit at the heart of the "Instructions" and "Pre-exchange" stages of the CQS Protocol, firms should update precedent libraries, case management templates and client-facing guidance well ahead of the deadline rather than scrambling in late March.
• Updated CQS training content for the 2026 cycle. The Law Society's learning platform has released refreshed "CQS 2026 Update" training covering conveyancing practice and risk, compliance and client care, aimed at SROs and Relevant Persons going through reaccreditation this year. If your firm's reaccreditation falls in 2026, build time in for the team to complete the current version of this training rather than an older module, and check directly with the Law Society for the specific content and any further scheme changes announced during the year.

Beyond these two points, the core structure of CQS — the Protocol's six stages and the seven CPMS areas set out above — has remained the stable backbone of the scheme for several years. Firms are best served by treating that core framework as the constant, and layering in specific form and training updates like the ones above as the Law Society announces them.

Staying Compliant: Where Firms Commonly Slip Up

In practice, most CQS audit findings and reaccreditation issues cluster around a small number of recurring problems:

• Incomplete or inconsistent identity and source-of-funds checks at the outset of a matter.
• Weak or undocumented anti-money laundering risk assessments on individual files.
• Payment diversion fraud controls that exist on paper but aren't consistently followed at completion.
• Training records for Relevant Persons that are incomplete, out of date, or don't cover new joiners promptly.
• File notes and precedents that don't clearly evidence the CPMS standards an assessor is checking against.

None of these are exotic risks — they're the everyday discipline of running files properly, applied consistently across every fee earner and every file. That's exactly why CQS ties training so closely to accreditation: a scheme is only as strong as the people applying it day to day.

FAQs

Is CQS accreditation compulsory for conveyancing solicitors?

No — CQS is not a statutory requirement, and firms can practise residential conveyancing without it. In practice, however, many lenders' conveyancing panels favour or require CQS membership, and clients and referral sources increasingly look for it, so most firms doing meaningful volumes of residential conveyancing choose to hold and maintain accreditation.

How long does CQS accreditation last before it needs renewing?

CQS accreditation runs on an annual cycle, with firms able to apply for renewal in the weeks before their certificate expires. On top of the annual renewal, firms are also subject to periodic reviews and assessments to confirm ongoing compliance with the Protocol and the Core Practice Management Standards.

Who has to complete CQS training at an accredited firm?

The firm's Senior Responsible Officer must pass the Law Society's CQS certification assessment, and everyone classed as a "Relevant Person" — broadly, fee earners and support staff who work on conveyancing files — must complete the required CQS training within the specified timeframe after accreditation or renewal.

Where can I find the latest official CQS requirements?

Always check the Law Society's own CQS pages at lawsociety.org.uk for the current scheme rules, fees and training requirements before a reaccreditation cycle. Scheme details, forms and fees are reviewed periodically, so treat this guide as a framework for what to check rather than a substitute for the Law Society's current guidance.

Whether you're preparing for your firm's first CQS assessment or refreshing your team ahead of reaccreditation, structured, verifiable training makes the process far less stressful. Learnsignal's CPD courses for legal professionals can help your conveyancing team build and evidence the knowledge assessors and clients expect — covering risk, compliance and client care alongside the practical skills conveyancers use every day.