In a year of ongoing change, we’ve all had to adapt to the roller-coaster of Covid-19, lockdowns, and what this has meant for our industry and our individual businesses.

As I write this, the news has just come through that the UK has become the first country in the world to approve the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the first vaccinations should begin mid-December.

Clearly this is (hopefully) the start of the first phase back to normality although one suspects it will be a long road with a number of twists and turns along the way.

Flexibility throughout 2020 has been key – from the dark days of March through May when the housing market was effectively shut down, to the post-lockdown 1 situation, the stamp duty changes, and the significant increase in demand and activity, we’ve all had to cut our cloth accordingly in order to make it through.

At the same time, we’ve no doubt all had to think about the future, and how any further prolonged pandemic-induced environment would impact on our ability to continue working as we do. I suspect there have been plenty of decisions made during this time that would have seemed potentially unthinkable pre-2020.

We too have had to consider where we sit and what happens next and other stakeholders have made similar assessments. And from that, major decisions have also been made.

You will hopefully have seen the recent news that Conveyancing Alliance – Broker Conveyancing is our adviser-focused brand within the business – has recently been bought from ULS Technology by the O’Neill Patient Group.

Clearly this is a significant development but one which I believe puts us in a much stronger position and provide us with the resource, investment and backing to be able to expand and enhance the service we provide to both advisers and our estate agent customers.

Now at this point you might expect me to say this remains ‘business as usual’ – and to a large extent it is – but really this is ‘business as usual-plus’ if you like. O’Neill Patient has been a key partner for us as a conveyancer for many years and they understand what makes us work, and what has made us successful. And vice versa.

So, in that regards Conveyancing Alliance will continue to do what it has always done.

However, we have further ambitions, further products and services we want to deliver, which can now be brought forward. Our timeframe to bring these to market will now shorten because of the new ownership and certainly, in areas like technology, we’ll be able to push forward with the updates which we have planned.

Essentially, we believe this is very good news for both us and those advisers who use our platform and provide conveyancing advice to their clients.

From that standpoint we won’t change, we’ll just be able to provide even greater levels of support to every single adviser who wants to stay in control of their case and ensure their client gets the very best conveyancing service possible. Of that you can be certain.

Mark Snape, chief executive, Broker Conveyancing