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Microsoft have awarded tmgroup Gold Standard partner status. 

Following on from many years as a Silver Standard partner, as well as our recently acquired ISO 27001 certification, this enhanced status further reassures our customers that we are a strong and reliable link in the supply chain. 

Being part of the Microsoft network is recognition of our commitment to creating and delivering innovative customer solutions and services based on Microsoft Technologies, acknowledging tmgroup’s product suite – including tmconvey, tmconnect and mio – as solutions designed and developed against the highest standards. 

Mark Gilbert, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at tmgroup comments:

“We are delighted to have achieved Gold Standard partner status, and proud of our dedicated team who have demonstrated technical competencies in application and web development, and the management of our data centre infrastructure.

We know how important it is for our customers to not only be able to trust us, but also to be able to reassure their own clients – with confidence – that their data is being handled in a secure environment. A world-recognised standard for excellence certainly helps.”

Our certifications set us apart as a high calibre business partner, proactively addressing the ever-growing threats of cyber crime and data theft by continually investing in our infrastructure and staff. 

For more information about tmgroup’s certifications, please contact your Account Manager. 

tmgroup have achieved ISO 27001 certification. The endorsement is only awarded to firms that comply with a mandated set of requirements relating to information security management.  Certified businesses must evidence an ongoing commitment to continually improving their systems. 

Information security is a critical business risk. It is attracting increasing scrutiny in the management of supply chain risk and consumers are more alert to the way their data is stored and shared.   

Joe Pepper, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at tmgroup comments:

“As a leading provider of data solutions to the property sector, tmgroup’s certification reinforces our commitment to working with legal and property professionals to help them meet lender and consumer requirements.”

Professor Richard Benham, Chairman of The National Cyber Management Centre comments:

“With the growing need for all organisations to show that they take data security and its management seriously I am delighted to have helped tmgroup achieve their ISO27001 accreditation.” 

As you may already be aware, on Monday 15th October, Groundsure launched their updated and enhanced ‘Groundsure Screening’ report, as well as their redesigned and enhanced ‘Groundsure Review’ report. 

You can find more information about these changes, alongside pricing and sample reports, below:

Redesigned and enhanced : ‘Groundsure Screening’ report

This report is for lower value less complex commercial property transactions and multi-site portfolios. This enhanced report meets Law Society compliance on contaminated land and flood risk and it covers; 

> Full flood risk assessment and Energy data

> Planning constraints

> Ground stability screening

> Property specific radon assessment

> Transportation screening including Crossrail 1 and 2, HS2 and more

Enhancements include; intelligently filtered data, results in Plain English, intuitive layout and page flow, and fewer pages.

Click here to see a sample report 

NEW Pricing

Groundsure have also made changes to the price of their Screening report;

Redesigned and enhanced : ‘Groundsure Review’ report

Gives expert, bespoke opinion required for all high value property transactions, complex industrial sites and redevelopments.  The report includes;

> Law Society compliant contaminated land and flood risk assessment

> Ground stability and Property specific radon assessment

> Manual review of high detail historical Ordnance Survey mapping in all cases

> Operational environmental risk assessment from Groundsure’s in-house team of environmental experts

> Full Energy & Transportation data (including Crossrail 1 & 2, HS2 and more)

> Planning constraints

Enhancements include; intelligently filtered data with fewer pages - displaying only relevant results, manual assessments in plain English, operational environmental risk assessment, complete HS2 data, Crossrail 2 route and safeguarding, optional planning applications, and intuitive layout and page flow. Each report will now also provide the Consultant's name and contact details for any queries or advice

Click here to see a sample report

NEW Pricing

Groundsure have also made changes to the price of their Review report;   

If you have any questions, please get in touch with your account manager, or get in touch with our friendly helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571, or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk.

Terrafirma new reports! Available now on tmconvey, here’s a handy round-up of their new Ground Report and CON29M…

NEW: Ground Report from Terrafirma

The Terrafirma Ground Report has arrived TODAY on tmconvey, featuring expert risk assessment and analysis on all ground risks and liabilities.

Click here to see a sample report

The Terrafirma Ground Report translates the risk from mining activity, subsidence, sinkholes, radon, fracking, mineral planning activity and more. It also includes Terrafirma’s official CON29M report, as well as never-seen before data and technology driven solutions to analyse the potential impact of man-made and natural ground perils on property transactions.

Key features 

> Pass rate over 97%

> £10 million Professional Indemnity

> 100% of the risk of reporting on mining and natural ground perils is transferred to Terrafirma

> Professional opinion with dynamic and colour coded next steps

> NEW User Key : Highlighting key actions for conveyancers, lenders and purchasers

> Integrated Con29M : Satisfying The Law Society CON29M (2018) guidance report

> SinkholeALERT

> Accepted by all lenders

Pricing 

NOW AVAILABLE: Terrafirma’s CON29M

The Terrafirma CON29M Report is the new official alternative to the Coal Authority CON29M.

Click here to see a sample report

Key features

> Official data licensed from the Coal Authority

> Expert interpreted answers to all 11 questions (14 for commercial)

> Liability for professional opinion passing to Terrafirma

> £10 million Professional Indemnity

> Satisfies the Law Society CON29M (2018) guidance report

Pricing 

Will I still be able to order the Coal Authority’s CON29M? 

Yes, of course. The Coal Authority’s CON29M will continue to be available to order on tmconvey. You’ll now just have a choice of two products, instead of one.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with your Account Manager, or our Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571, or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk.

Thinking about automating your IT processes to boost efficiency in your firm?

Don’t get off to a false start. Here, tmgroup’s Infrastructure Lead, James Canfer, shares his experience of automating key IT processes in the business and saving time.

Working in IT Operations, one challenge my team constantly faces is how to do more and how to know more, with the same resources.  A real focus for us over the past couple of years has been the increased automation of our operations and the experience has drawn some interesting conclusions.

Benefits of Automation

As a team we’re always striving to deliver a better service to our customers, to reduce the burden of mind numbing tasks on the staff and to operate as efficient an operation as we can.  Automation ticks all of those boxes, but in particular, it can free staff up to focus on projects that deliver business value and reduce the number of interruptions when focusing on complex work.

The useful working time lost in a member of staff switching focus from complex work, to deal with a “quick” problem should not be underestimated.

Where to start?

The temptation for us was to buy in tooling to automate the work for us.  Big mistake!  Almost every tool we demoed require specialist skills and experience just to gain some modest benefit.  In addition, you are spending money upfront before understanding the problem you’re trying to solve. 

Back to Basics

So we started with analysis – sorry, it’s nothing more exciting!  What tasks were the team doing on a repetitive basis, once a week, once a day or several times a day?  These could be anything from reactive tasks to planned BAU tasks.

Next we looked at the time each task was taking, what the main steps involved were and estimating the effort involved in automating the task.  In some cases the estimate was a great big question mark, because of the complexity involved.

Prioritise

When it came to prioritising which tasks to tackle, the simplest tasks that were the quickest to automate went to the top of the list.  Followed by those that occurred most frequently.  Everything else went on the backlog.

...And Buy Some Tools?

Actually, no!  You may or may not have heard of a scripting language called PowerShell, which is a component part of Microsoft Windows.

Believe it or not, my team has been able to leverage PowerShell to automate months of previously manual work without spending any money on tooling.  Instead, as a team we’ve invested time in learning how best to leverage PowerShell and in building our own tools.  

The challenge and the experience of learning a new skill together as a team and the near immediate benefits have all been huge morale boosters.  Surprisingly in a very short space of time, we found ourselves automating tasks that are far more complex.  Armed with this new skill, tasks that are more complex are approached as a challenge and as an opportunity to enhance our skills further.

Unexpected Benefits and No Catches

By leveraging PowerShell, we have realised all of the benefits mentioned earlier in this article, but also some really useful and unexpected ones too.  These include requiring much simpler documentation, or in some cases none at all; greater configuration control and built in roll back plans because we’re codifying more and more of our operations; and we’ve found ourselves adopting more and more DevOps principles almost as a by-product of moving to this way of working.

And the catches?  Like anything in IT, automation requires maintenance.  To be fair this is a very light burden to shoulder.  Beyond that automating with PowerShell has been entirely positive!

Just to make you aware, CLS insurance are making a number of changes to their policies on 15th October.  

Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with these changes, particularly if you currently have any CLS insurance documents saved in draft on tmconvey – as on 15th October, new policies will be available, and your drafts will be removed and will need to be reordered.

“Insurance Product Information Document” to replace “Policy Summary”

In preparation for the Insurance Distribution Directive taking effect in October, CLS insurance have incorporated an “Insurance Product Information Document” within their insurance policies. 

Following the consultation on the sale of insurance in the EU, this will replace the policy summary – and clearly displays, in a universal format, important information such as what the policy covers, and what is and isn’t insured.  

Legal Indemnity policies will be issued under CLS Property Insight Limited

Legal Indemnity policies will be issued under CLS Property Insight Limited, who will continue to review, accept and offer suitable coverage at the most competitive terms.

More products will also be available on their online system 

CLS will also be offering more policies via their online system – which were previously available only on a bespoke basis. 

You can see the full list of new additions below: 

• Forfeiture of Lease (Breach of Covenant) (Purchaser) 

• Forfeiture of Lease (Housing Act Repossession) (Lender)

• Lack of Party Wall Agreement 

• Lack of Permission to Construct a Vehicle Crossing or Dropped Kerb

• Lack of Listed Building Consent

• Lack of Conservation Area Consent

• Limited Title Guarantee

• Manorial Rights

• Right to Park (Leasehold) (Lender)

CLS will also be removing their ConveySure® brand.

Draft policies will be removed on 15th October and will need to be reordered

Please note, in reflection of the above changes, on 15th October 2018 any draft policies ordered prior to this date will be removed from the online platform and will need to be reordered.

If you do have any drafts currently saved on tmconvey, please either submit them before midnight on Friday 12th October, or make a note of the details so you can easily reorder the policies on or after 15th October. 

If you have any questions, please contact your Account Manager, or get in touch with Helpdesk on 0800 840 5571 or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk 

Terrafirma have advised us that they will be making some changes to their pricing on 1st September 2018. 

This includes price increases for a select number of site size bandings on their Coal Extra reports, as well as the introduction of a new site size banding for their Assess reports. 

These changes will be applied automatically to any orders made on tmconvey on or after 1st September.

You can find the full details in the table below: 

If you have any questions, please contact your Account Manager, or get in touch with our friendly Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571 or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk

The Law Society is making some important new changes with respect to Mining and Natural Ground Perils which will be covered in the soon to be released 25th Edition of its Conveyancing Handbook. 

Mining and ground report specialist, Terrafirma, is launching a three-part coffee-break webinar series to ensure that you have all of the relevant information at your fingertips. 

Starting on Tuesday 11th September and led by Terrafirma CEO, Tom Backhouse, they will be no more than 15 minutes in length and are designed to give you all of the necessary information including what the changes are, how they impact you and what the benefits are to you and your clients.  

Please register your interest and attendance for each webinar via the following links. A download of the webinar will be made available to pre-registered attendees following each event.

Part 1 : Important Changes to The Law Society Conveyancing Law Handbook

Time : 11am (BST) 

Date : Tuesday 11th September 2018

Click here to register

2. Introducing the Ground Report 

Time : 11am (BST)

Date : Thursday 13th September 2018

Click here to register

3. The Ground Report, a Step-by-Step Overview 

Time : 11am BST

Date : Tuesday 18 September 2018

Click here to register

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Please note you can also include this webinar attendance in your Annual Compliance Declaration to the SRA.

Here are the latest updated prices for Thames Water Drainage & Water products

From Thursday 2nd August, Future Climate Info’s Essential, Standard and Premium Residential reports, as well as their Standard and Premium Commercial reports will be available to order on tmconvey.

You’ll also be able to order their Flood and Energy reports - for Residential and Commercial. 

You can see a summary of the new product suite, along with sample reports here: 

Flood:

> Flood Residential - less than 25 Ha : Click here to see a sample report

> Flood Commercial less than 25 Ha : Click here to see a sample report

Energy:

> Energy Commercial - less than 30Ha : Click here to see a sample report

> Energy Residential - less than 10Ha : Click here to see a sample report

Residential:

> Essential Residential Report 

Meets the minimum requirements of the Law Society’s guidance on flooding and Contaminated Land.

> Environmental

> Flooding 

> Standard Residential Report 

 Contains all of the information from the Essential report and includes Ground Stability data.

> Environmental

> Flooding

> Ground Stability  

> Premium Residential Report 

You can see a sample report here

Contains all of the information from the Standard report and includes data on Energy & Infrastructure such as wind farms, shale gas exploration, and HS2.

> Environmental

> Flooding

> Ground Stability  

> Energy + Infrastructure

Commercial:

> Standard Commercial Report

Contains information on:

> Environmental

> Ground Stability

> Flooding

> Premium Commercial Report

Click here to see a sample report

Contains all of the information from the Standard report and includes data on Energy & Infrastructure such as wind farms, shale gas exploration, and HS2

> Environmental

> Ground Stability

> Flooding

> Energy + Infrastructure

For more information, please speak to your Account Manager, or get in touch with Helpdesk on 0800 840 5571  or helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk