A report released earlier this week by the House of Lords has suggested that the governments management of HIPs has destroyed any ounce of confidence the country might have had in them.
The committee spoke of widespread opposition to the introduction of HIPs, hammering home the issue that both industry professionals and homeowners have not had enough time to prepare for their implementation in 4 weeks time.
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Lord Filkin, chairman of the Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments, said:
“The comments which we have received from key stakeholder organisations in the housing market are striking in the strength of their criticisms. Such comment may not invalidate the purposes of the regulations, but we believe that the government need to take such criticism seriously and to do more if the market is to respond seriously.”
The main critics are pushing for a delay in the introduction of HIPs, largely on the basis that there are too few energy assessors something which the Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP) and Energy-Assessors.com strongly deny.
Mike Ockenden, director-general of (AHIPP), called the Merit Committees report on HIPs unbalanced:
While its findings have been far from damning of the HIPs regulations, the committees failure to consult with major players in the industry has made it difficult to see how a truly balanced report can have been derived. As with any major reform there will always be an element of opposition within the industry but if the committee had successfully consulted with the full range of industry bodies involved, a number of the conclusions drawn may have been very different.
AHIPP represents a wide constituency of members from estate agents and surveyors to conveyancers, search organisations, insurers and finance companies. All of these organisations have made a substantial investment to ensure the smooth and successful implementation of HIPs on 1 June, yet all of these collective voices appear to have been ignored.
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Ockenden also voices the fact that statistics dont tend to lie: Latest figures show that the number of transaction failures fell 8 per cent, and the time between offer-exchange was cut by an average of 11 days as a result of HIPs, even without the added advantage of the Home Condition Report (HCR).
Even though most buyers and sellers have heard of HIPs and are aware that the clock is ticking until they are put into practice across the nation, only 27 per cent of people could quote the correct title of the abbreviation when asked. Instead over a third claimed it stood for Homeland Immigration Policy nothing to do with housing.
The government and industry bodies such as the AHIPP are still adamant that HIPs will go ahead without any hitches come 1 June, although this has done little to silence the critics. Jenny Driscoll, a spokesperson for Which? commented:
Which? recommends a 12 month delay in implementation, so that the government can review whether the key objectives have been met. This will also give the government time to learn lessons from the pilot studies and establish whether key elements of the pack are still useful to consumers.
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