February 2008

NEW MINISTER IN FIRST DAY STORM

Petition calling for key concession to continue

NEWLY-appointed Housing Minister Caroline Flint has walked straight into a growing storm over plans to change the regulations governing Home Information Packs in May — less than six months after they were extended to cover all properties.

A petition demanding the continuation of ‘first day marketing’ went live on the No 10 Downing Street website on the day she took office — and attracted 3,000 signatures in just 72 hours.

Currently, with HIPs now applying to all residential properties for sale, the marketing of a property can begin as soon as the Pack is ordered.

But the Government intends to end this concession on May 31 and will require that the Pack is physically complete before marketing commences.

Campaigners argue that because HIPs take days to produce there will be delays for sellers wanting to begin marketing quickly and the ending of the concession is an infringement of the personal liberty to sell a property at will.

The petition has been created by Nick Salmon, leader of SPLINTA (Sellers’ Pack Law is Not the Answer), a lobbying group founded in 2001 to fight the introduction of Home Information Packs.

Mr Salmon, a fellow of the National Association of Estate Agents and now commercial director of 20-branch estate agency, Harrison Murray, said: “There is no sustainable argument in favour of ending first day marketing.

“The strength of feeling about this is making itself shown in the rapidly escalating number of signatures on the petition.

“Caroline Flint has inherited the poison chalice of HIPs from her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, and we sincerely hope that she will take a pragmatic and intelligent view about the scheduled change to the regulations.

“If she doesn’t there will be a lot of angry sellers knocking on her door in June.”

Several thousand branches of estate agencies and solicitors have begun forwarding a circular email, headed ‘Don’t let Gordon Brown take another liberty!’ to their clients, colleagues and friends, inviting them to sign the petition and then forward the e-mail on to their own address books.

Mr Salmon says this is just the beginning of the fight to retain first day marketing. “We shall shortly be launching the next phase of the campaign to raise public awareness about this issue,” he said.
“Whether you love or loathe HIPs the ending of first day marketing is utterly nonsensical.”

Meanwhile, the NAEA, which also campaigned long and hard over first day marketing being allowed if and when Packs were introduced, has reaffirmed its opposition to HIPs in the wake of a Select Committee report that the introduction of Packs was “mishandled” by the Government’s department for Communities and Local Government.

The committee accused the CLG of failing to deliver over HIPs, which were supposed to be a ‘key priority’ in 2007.

A number of reasons were identified for this, with failure to engage effectively with stakeholders being cited as one major factor.

NAEA chief executive Peter Bolton King said: “We certainly cannot argue with this point. Time and time again we urged the Government to listen to us and take our concerns seriously.

“We made our feelings clear both privately and publicly so there can have been no doubt what our concerns were and why we had them. Somehow, though, the CLG managed not to take any of it in.

“We are extremely keen to help the Government find ways of improving the home buying and selling process in the UK, but we will not support a piece of legislation that we believe is ineffective, or worse – that is detrimental to the market and consumers.”