Grant Shapps Decision to 'consult' is a Sham

HipConsultant.co.uk has today run a blog entry to record a reply from Grant Shapps’ Office to a series of questions.

Like most replies from politicians the response ( as detailed below) does not fully address the issues raised, and in fact, as is usual when dealing with Shapps, raises more questions than it purports to answer.

In fact there is nothing new in the response. We have been aware for some time of the ‘back tracking’ with the 100 day consultation period, we know he does not intend to replace the HIP with anything similar, and as regard the EPC apart from repeating it will be retained there is very little in the response to provide comfort to energy assessors.

The reply reads:

‘We do not plan to replace HIPs with anything else. If we win the next election, we will scrap HIPs as soon as possible after a consultation period - we expect to be around 100 days. We are very keen to see industry/market driven solutions to any problems in the home-buying process but do not believe that the Government should impose more red tape and expensive bureaucracy on consumers, particularly during the longest and deepest recession on record. Though the compulsory element of HIPs will be removed they will remain voluntary and it is up to the industry to create a product that consumers value and want.

Grant fully appreciates how difficult this is for inspectors and shares their anger about the money they and others have spent on training. We believe that this Government has led you up a garden path by introducing a needlessly bureaucratic, expensive and largely pointless piece of legislation and we have every sympathy for someone in your position. However, it does seem to me that the people to blame are the ones currently in power. We have been consistent in our intentions and have warned the market place that HIPs didn’t enjoy our support throughout. We have set out separate policies on our support for EPCs and our expectation that they will become more widespread, an important tool in combating climate change, which will help those who are trained as DEAs.’

Interestingly the language used remains contradictory in that there is mention of the word ‘scrap’ whereas later it records: ‘Though the compulsory element of HIPs will be removed they will remain voluntary and it is up to the industry to create a product that consumer’s value and want’. So Mr Shapps you are now saying the HIP is not going, it will still be available but on a voluntary basis! If so please drop the word ‘scrap’.

We all know (or should know) as indeed Shapps does, that voluntary delivery of the HIP will simply not work. There needs to be an element of compulsion otherwise the benefits it delivers will be lost. We only need to look at the Law Society’s National Transaction Protocol to see that it will fail if left to voluntary take up. Shapps should be reminded of what he said in his Home-Buying Review where he recorded on the subject of the HIP: ‘Labour’s attempt to improve the home buying process through HIPs has been an unmitigated failure but what lessons can we learn? If solicitors were required to confirm that they were a) instructed b) had the necessary documentation to hand and c) were ready to send out a contract at short notice, prior to placing a property on the market, would this not go a long way to solving the problems of delay?’

More significantly how on earth does a ‘Conservative Government’ hope to carry out objective consultation when they have already condemned the HIP and all those associated with it! Surely the correct and more advisable message must be ‘we need to have a re-think on the HIP front and for this reason we are carrying out consultation’. As the situation currently stands (and it appears to me to be irreversible) Shapps is simply intending to use consultation as a means to a predetermined end. Does this not make a mockery out of the whole process?

I also question the objective of the consultation. Is this a process that will help decide whether the ‘power to suspend’ should be invoked, or is it part and parcel of planned primary legislation? If the former, I very much doubt the so called ‘power to suspend’ can as I had said countless times before, be used for the stated purpose of ‘scrapping’.

Christmas is a time when we should all be honest with each other. It’s a pity that this does not, it seems, extend to Shapps and his Party. For the sake of making sure we do not see a major stalling of our property market recovery we should all be calling upon him to come forward with a New Year resolution of postponing any plans to do with the HIP until he (or as is more likely his successor) has had a chance of carrying out a wider and more comprehensive review of the home buying and selling process.