Core Legal Limited

As a home buyer I had only positive experience. Still can't believe we bought a house in 2 months and with the chain. Special thanks to Charlotte.

Core Legal acted on my behalf for my re-mortgage which was handled very professionally and within a short timeframe. I will definitely be recommended them

Thank you to Matthew Dickenson and his assistant Charlie for your help

Core Legal at their Stockton branch - First time buyer. Submitted a formal complaint today as they've completely misrepresented me, my conveyancer Katie Ayton didn't tell me that the seller was refusing to do a gas safety certificate until AFTER the sale, despite me insisting it be a requirement of the sale. The closest thing I got to a gas safety certificate was core legal trying to gaslight me that it's not their job to ask for one. Seriously guys? They never replied to my several follow ups asking for a gas safety certificate.

I've since moved in, no heating, no hot water despite them saying it's in full working condition on the TA6 form. I've complained asked for transparency and Katie Ayton the conveyancer is ignoring my requests to send information over but she did tell me AFTER the sale that they were REFUSING to provide a gas safety certificate. In fact, she's been ignorant throughout the whole process rather than guiding me as a first time buyer and that's how I've ended up in this mess and ended up forking out quite a bit of money to get this house warm again during winter and when it's snowing.

Will update the review if they manage to turn it around, I've emailed the directors with a formal complaint today but I would recommend staying away from this company.

They handled a family members sale a few years ago and it was all good but as you can see from the reviews, about 8-12 months ago they've gone entirely downhill.

A lot of the directors seem to be mentioned in the bad reviews so I can imagine I will be escalating to the Legal Ombudsman or SRA in a few months.

EDIT: Core Legal have reimbursed me due to their failures. However, its worth noting that after this review I found out that Katie Ayton is NOT a qualified solicitor by their Facebook page. It seems that this company has a problem with pretending apprentices are real solicitors. They put the director as the main solicitor on the case but I never heard from Sally at all, even after cc'ing her into my formal complaint.

Our experience with Core Legal has been extremely disappointing and, unfortunately, very stressful.

We dealt with several members of the team during our purchase, and the overall standard of communication and professionalism fell well below what we reasonably expected. Two individuals who appear frequently in positive reviews — Vivi and Matthew Dickinson — were directly involved in our matter. In our experience, communication was often inadequate, and we ultimately felt it necessary to raise formal concerns regarding the conduct and handling of our case.

The most serious issue arose post-completion, when we discovered that our property had not been properly registered with HM Land Registry and that part of the property was not included in the purchase contract. These issues only came to light years later when we attempted to sell, resulting in significant delay, stress, and financial impact.

Since completion, we have exchanged a substantial and unacceptable volume of emails and numerous phone calls in an effort to resolve matters that should have been addressed correctly at the outset. Nearly four years later, the situation remains ongoing.

We submitted a formal complaint, which has been ignored by Core Legal and therefore we decided to look at alternative legal options to deal with this matter.

Based on our experience, we would urge prospective clients to carefully consider their choice of solicitor and avoid Core Legal.

An extremely distressing experience. There is a wholesale lack of client care and communication is truly appalling - first from Sally Hare and then Anthony Bastain. The service is so bad that at some point I started to wonder if we'd been the victim of some elaborate scam. I have never experienced such behaviour from solicitors before. Sadly I have not one good point to recommend this firm, we have paid them and received nothing more than stress and upset in return.