Home Information Pack (Amendment) Regulations 2007

My Lords, I declare my interest as a consultant to a firm of estate agents. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith mentioned some of the problems with the energy performance certificate and although it is welcomed by a lot of people, I would remind the House that it is not a panacea. It is not going to solve the energy problems of housing. It might identify some but it does not provide a solution. HIPs is a very different issue, and that issue, among others, has led to this Government being the most disliked and distrusted when it comes to property matters, most particularly for the lack of consultation. Even the Communities and Local Government Select Committee in another place, which has just published its annual report for 2007, said: "““CLG’s failure to engage effectively early enough with stakeholders is both one of the principle reasons why HIPs were delayed and a further example of the Department’s inability to build the relationships it needs if it is to succeed in taking partners with it across the whole range of policy””." It was absolutely crucial that the Government took the property industry with it. It clearly failed and that was a major mistake. What have been the effects of HIPs so far? With regard to speeding up the process, we have no evidence at all. In fact, we are building up quite a caseload of work imposed by the purchasers’ solicitors, asking for far more details in the searches and not accepting the vendors’ searches. Few buyers read HIPs or even ask for them. In our firm we have not had a single prospective purchaser even asking for a home information pack. I thought I had better widen the range, so I rang a number of estate agents around the country. I have not found one that has said a prospective purchaser has asked for a home information pack. One prospective purchaser asked for an EPC but none for a home information pack. There has been a reduction in the number of properties coming to the market. Whether this can be blamed entirely on HIPs is debatable and I am not going to make judgment at the moment, but it is sad at a time when we clearly need more housing. There is a reduction in land coming on the market for new build and there is also a reduction in new stock coming on the market. That is going to restrict mobility and changing jobs, and it is going to add to the general economic decline and depression that is beginning to affect us. In the research we have been doing—and I have talked to other agents about this—we have also found that no action is being taken on the EPC. People will look at the EPC but they have got their own ideas for the house. Very little action is being taken as a consequence of having that certificate. What are the consequences of these regulations? We come back to something that I have been stressing all the way through our discussions on home information packs and that is first-day marketing. I ask the Minister, please, to think again. In many cases, it is taking well over two weeks to get a home information pack. There are still delays and there are going to continue to be delays. Please do not distort the market any more by withdrawing the ability to market on the first day that one gets the instructions. It is a very important part of how the property market works and is used by so many agents, particularly in the south-east where the market tends to be bigger and stronger than elsewhere. To take that away would be really detrimental, and I mean that. It would be utterly detrimental. I ask the noble Baroness to think again and let us continue to market at day one. I know of no evidence of agents deliberately flouting HIPs, so could she just leave that provision? I again raise the point of my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith about the results for the pre-implementation trials of HIPs. It is quite wrong that the Government have not published these. It was a pity that the Liberal Democrat Party was taken in by the Government’s promises on pre-implementation trials but the results should have been published by now. Let me quickly move on to the leasehold market. The plans for this are vague and the regulatory impact assessment is based on assumptions about consumer behaviour rather than evidence. One particular concern is that the impact assessment fails to take into consideration the carbon cost of preparing an EPC. Will a new EPC be required with every lease? If so, how does that comply with the rules from Brussels that tell us that an EPC is valid for 10 years? If you have to have an EPC only every 10 years, the letting market is being treated differently to the sales market. That leads to all sorts of further complications. What the Government still have not addressed with regard to letting is the problem of getting information out of managing agents. As far as the regulations are concerned, all one now needs to produce is the lease, but as from 1 June one is going to have to produce all the details and we are going to be back in the hands of managing agents who have no incentive at all to provide that information to vendors. That is going to mean a further delay in bringing property to the market. I hope the Minister will think on that again.