Pickles today laid an Order suspending HIPs with immediate effect, pending primary legislation for a permanent abolition. The Secretary of State said he has taken this swift action in order to avoid uncertainty and prevent a slump in an already fragile housing market.
In the announcement he said that suspending HIPs will reduce the cost of selling a home, remove a layer of regulation from the process and provide a welcome help to the housing market during the recovery. It will also mean a saving for consumers to the tune of £870m over ten years, giving sellers more money in their pocket to spend in the wider economy.
Pickles and Shapps also said that the Government is determined to help people reduce their energy bills, improve our energy security and tackle climate change by increasing the energy efficiency of their homes. Sellers will therefore still be required to commission, but won't need to have received, an EPC before marketing their property, and the Government will consider how the EPC can play its part in the new drive for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.
The move was welcomed by many. NAEA chief executive Peter Bolton King said: “For those of us who have weathered the turbulent market conditions of the past year, the suspension of HIPs is very welcome news.
“It will be greeted enthusiastically by both the housing market and house buyers, few of whom have paid much attention to these pointless packs.
“It is also good news for sellers. They no longer need to shell out hundreds of pounds for a piece of pointless regulation that benefits no one.
“The NAEA has long campaigned for HIPs to be scrapped. They have failed to benefit home buyers and actively discouraged sellers.”
David Smith, senior partner, Carter Jonas, commented: "In 1997, Tony Blair announced that he was going to remove the uncertainty in the house buying process and introduced the Home Information Pack. It's now 13 years on and the same level of uncertainty exists so HIPs, very clearly, were not the answer.”
Matt Hutchinson of flat and house share website, Spareroom.co.uk, said: "While there will be a collective sigh of relief that the universally reviled Home Information Pack has now been scrapped, we should spare a thought for all the companies that will go out of business overnight and the thousands of people who will lose their jobs.
"From the outset, the HIP has been a shambles and has done more bad than good for the housing market. If there is anything to be taken out of this sorry episode, then it is the need for more consistent long-term policies on housing and for the Government to listen to, and take onboard advice from, people within the industry before rolling out ill-thought out initiatives."
The one disappointed voice came from Mike Ockenden, director general of AHIPP, who said: “We are hugely disappointed to hear that Grant Shapps has reneged on his promise to review the packs before any other action was taken. Over 3,000 jobs will go and 10,000 will be affected as a result of the suspension of HIPs and £100million revenue will be lost to the Treasury in VAT receipts.
“However, we want to work with the Government and we still want the consultation we have been promised. We are not suggesting that HIPs should be retained. AHIPP has accepted that they will be scrapped.
“We have been proposing for months that a legal or exchange ready pack be instructed at the start of the sales process. We think it would be crazy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remove at a stroke all the good things that have come about with HIPs, and the lessons we have learnt.
“If we do this, then the opportunity for reform will have been lost for a generation.”
