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Home Information Packs HIP's
Since the end of year 2007 all homes have had be marketed with a valid HIP which includes and Energy Performance Certificate ( EPC ).
Please visit the site www.homeinformationpacks.gov.uk where a full list of publications are available.
From the point of view of this site energyandhome the EPC is crucially important and the following document shows how houses will be classified
Well a change of government (May 2010) has had a dramatic effect on HOME INFORMATION PACKS they are gone!
From Times Online
May 20, 2010
Government gets rid of unpopular Home Information Packs
Francesca Steele, Anne Ashworth
Home Information Packs are to be scrapped with immediate effect, the coalition Government announced today.
The unpopular HIPs - information required before a seller can market their home to potential buyers - was "pointless red-tape" that was "strangling the housing market", the Housing Minister Grant Shapps said.
The death of the scheme - which was Labour's key housing market reform - was celebrated with the cutting of red tape encircling a doll's house outside an estate agency in Battersea, southwest London.
Local mothers watched as Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Kirstie Allsopp, the television home show queen, joined Mr Shapps to cut the tape.
Ms Allsopp, who is providing unpaid assistance to Mr Shapps on ideas to streamline the buying process, has been a vociferous campaigner against HIPs since their inception, arguing that they served no useful purpose and slowed the pace of housing transactions.
She professed herself "thrilled to bits" and said she would be working with Mr Shapps on further ways to speed up homebuying. "We are a small economy, we need to be a dynamic economy," she said.
HIPs were brought into effect in August 2007 by Labour for properties with four or more bedrooms in England and Wales, before being gradually introduced across the rest of the market.
A clause in the 2004 Housing Act allows the Government to suspend HIPs immediately, although primary legislation is pending.
Mr Pickles told The Times that the process of forming the coalition had made it easier to focus on the issues that needed to be sorted quickly.
He estimated that the sellers of houses had spent around £1 billion to date on the provision of HIPs, which cost an average of £500 each.
Homeowners and campaigners have criticised the policy and said that it had failed to help buyers and discouraged people from putting their property up for sale when the market needed a boost.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both pledged in their manifestos and in their coalition agreement to get rid of HIPs.
Energy Performance Certificates, (above EPC) which rate a home's energy efficiency, will remain.
Personal reflection - BEFORE HIPS, most people were happy to get a survey done before buying a house and this will be the norm in a post-HIPS era. Why the then government had to interfere with this accepted procedure was beyond comprehension.
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