Government ignores stakeholders’ warnings over home buying reform

Major stakeholders in the residential property sector are fed up with the Government ignoring their concerns over the implementation of Home Information Packs (HIPs).

With less than three months until the introduction of the packs industry leaders, including RICS, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the National Association of Estate Agents and the Law Society, have written to the Government warning that the plans are chaotic, costly to the consumer and potentially very damaging to the housing market.

RICS spokesperson Jeremy Leaf says: ”These are not new concerns. We have been talking with the Government about them for a long time but it has not listened. As implementation plans have emerged over the last 18 months our concerns, around the cost to consumers and the market consequences of the HIP, have grown markedly.

“The Communities and Local Government Department’s gold plating of the Brussels’ requirements on energy performance, now the only remaining element of the HIP, is the most recent example of an approach that defies any rational explanation. We totally support energy performance initiatives but we believe the Department’s approach will actually increase carbon emissions not reduce them.”

Requests by the expert bodies for a collective meeting with the Minister and the Secretary of State to discuss workable solutions have been ignored or declined.

“Officials are blindly pressing on with their compulsory Whitehall solution despite evidence that this ignores market realities, introduces unnecessary regulation and is environmentally unsound. After eight years, the HIP we are now left with will serve no useful purpose and certainly will not solve the problems in the home buying and selling process that HIPs were supposed to address.”