The industry has begun weighing up government proposals to allow home owners to switch mortgage within seven days.

The plans, proposed as part of a call for evidence on helping consumers easily move between financial providers as with energy and broadband, would hit conveyancers and mortgage lenders who would have to find a way of speeding up a process that can usually take up to two months or more.

Trade body the Council of Mortgage Lenders pointed out that there are several regulatory requirements that have to be fulfilled in a mortgage application so time is needed for that.

The CML added that there is no evidence from the market that would suggest the timescales to complete remortgages are seen as an obvious barrier to the incentive to do so.

Paul Smee, CML director general, said: “We fully support the switching principles, and our members have long recognised that speed (as well as cost and service) is frequently valued highly by remortgage customers.

“However, whether a seven-day target is realistic, given tasks that lenders need to complete to fulfil risk and regulatory requirements, depends on when the clock starts ticking.”

Laura Burkinshaw, legal director of Dezrezlegal, said of the proposed timescale: “As others have rightly suggested this will all depend on when a conveyancer is instructed.  It seems a bit far stretched to me for a conveyancer/solicitor to be able to turn this around taking into consideration the cooling-off period now required by the EU regulations.

“The majority of re-mortgages are already turned around in a short space of time that this is one part of the industry that the Government should be leaving well alone.”

Doug Crawford, chief executive of the UK’s largest conveyancer My Home Move, said a seven-day turnaround is possible but this would also rely on the speed of the mortgage lender and a client completing and returning documents.

He said: “We welcome any initiative that makes the process of buying, selling or remortgaging a home easier for the client.

“The idea of being able to switch a mortgage in seven days is very attractive for home-owners and on the whole remortgaging can be a straight-forward and relatively quick conveyancing transaction.

“Title documents are usually received from the Land Registry within 24 hours, remortgages generally do not require local, drainage or environmental searches, so a major external source of delay is removed, and our clients can provide all of their information online, via our eWay service.

“In most cases, with the exception of some leasehold remortgages which are dependent on the landlord supplying relevant information, a seven-day turnaround is possible.”

Andy Sommerville, director of conveyancing search provider Search Acumen, said the Stamp Duty rush showed how fast conveyancers could work.

He told EYE: “Churning out mortgage applications within seven days is certainly possible from a conveyancing perspective. The industry has just demonstrated how quickly they can push transactions through for buy-to-let investors, and new innovations are speeding up the process all the time.

“On receiving instructions, solicitors can quickly request OC1 from Land Registry or their search provider. While unregistered land could take longer, these transactions are typically few and far between. In some cases a conveyancer may opt for search insurance when pressed for time.

“Searches will not be required for most lenders, but it’s worth going through the CML handbook to see if a particular lender requires searches on a remortgage, and so the ball is ultimately in the lender’s court. But solicitors will have to meet them halfway, and this will depend on whether they have the agility and the contingency plans in place to react quickly.

“The proposed reforms, if lenders can get them to work, would be fantastic news for home-owners and make switching even easier.”

Brian Murphy, head of lending for the Mortgage Advice Bureau, said that in some cases mortgage offers already come out in under seven days if the lender has the necessary information on the client and the property.

He said: “This depends on a number of factors. If it’s a purchase case, it’s obviously subject to the conveyancing process and the length of the chain. If it’s a remortgage case and the client is purely switching product or lender on a like for like basis in terms of borrowing, it may be more straightforward.

“But if a client is remortgaging to capital raise, then again it will be subject to LTV and the affordability test may be greater, with potentially more information required, and this may put more pressure on the timeline.”

The call for evidence closes on June 23.