Government's U-turn on Home Information Packs. (Surrey Heath Liberal Democrats

Surrey Heath Liberal Democrats - working for you, for a better future <info@surreyheathlibdems.org.uk>

Government's U-turn on Home Information Packs.

August 10, 2006 5:40 PM

House Many Surrey Heath residents will have heard about Home Information Packs. Some residents may even have trained as Inspectors.

Liberal Democrats believe that the way the government introduced the Home Information Packs scheme was ill thought-out and potentially disastrous for the industry and for individuals in training.

Councillor Duncan Clark said "The government refused to listen to warnings about the inadequate numbers of inspectors trained, or to arguments that they should implement full pilot roll-outs quickly, so that a realistic assessment could be made of the viability of the nature and date of introduction of the compulsory scheme. "

"The absence of adequate pilot schemes has caused great difficulties in assessing the potential impact of Home Information Packs on the housing market, and the practicalities of their implementation nationally."

"More worryingly, many home inspectors who embarked on training have invested substantial money on the courses, often taking out loans to do so. The government has achieved the worst of all possible worlds by encouraging hard-working people to invest their time and money in a scheme that was over-reaching in its scope, and then scaling the scheme back by making the Home Condition Reports voluntary, potentially leaving many of them in the lurch."

"Liberal Democrats in Parliament are now pushing the government to compensate those who have wasted their money on this scheme, and to provide certainty to the industry and consumers on the direction of future government policy so that they can prepare properly for the changes that do eventually come."