Association of Home Information Pack Providers and Shapps go to battle once again over HIPs

Just when the Labour Party probably thought they had heard the end of Home Information Packs being blamed for the collapse in the UK property market...

Pressure was once again piled on the Labour Party to axe the much maligned  Home Information Packs this week after figures ( apparently plucked out of thin air ) revealed they had made a £320million hole in the struggling housing market.

In a report in the Daily Express, it was suggested that during the last 12 months a total of 1.1million Home Information Packs were purchased, costing a total of at least £319million and netting the Treasury £44million in VAT. However, only 650,000 homes were sold, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of owners with out-of-date HIPs

Grant Shapps, the Shadow Housing Minister called on the government to suspend the Hips. Shapps said: “Home Information Packs are not trusted and are costing a struggling housing market hundreds of millions."

Rather predictably the government maintain that HIPs expedite sales ( and the associated conveyancing ) and the costs would have been incurred anyway. Just as predictable the government line is also reflected by the Association of Home Information Pack Providers.

The Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP), as reported in Estate Agent Today, challenged Mr Shapps’ assertion that half the money spent on HIPs last year was wasted because the properties were unsold claiming that his comment  was a “simply inaccurate” statement.

The Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP) said of Shapps:

 “He states that in 2008, 1.1m HIPs were purchased, but only 650,000 homes were sold. Perhaps, however, Mr Shapps should have stopped to consider how many of these properties went on to be sold in 2009. While it is easy to interpret statistics on an annual basis, this type of over-simplification makes accurate analysis impossible.

By using the statistics in this way Mr Shapps fails to take into account the most basic workings of the market. I’m also unable to see how this assertion corresponds with his previous claim that non-compliance levels [with HIPs] for 2008 were 50 per cent."