Presumption of authority
244.Paragraph 8 Under the present law, a conveyancer does not have implied authority to sign a contract for the sale or purchase of an interest in land on behalf of his or her client. This means that currently a conveyancer acting for one party to a conveyancing transaction would be entitled to see the written authority from the other party to his conveyancer to sign on his or her behalf. Paragraph 8 has been included to avoid the need for the exchange of paper-based authorities before contracts can be concluded electronically. Where an authorised network user purports to make a disposition or contract on behalf of a client which has been authenticated by the user as agent and contains a statement that the user is acting with the client’s authority, this will be deemed to be the case so far as any other party to the document is concerned. It is likely to be a requirement of rules under paragraph 5 that conveyancers should get authority in the appropriate way. The sanction for failure to do so would be the possibility of the network access agreement being terminated for failure to comply with its terms (it being a condition of such an agreement that those who are granted access comply with the rules for the time being in force under paragraph 5).
