Campaigners request to continue Hips concession

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by Kay Murchie

Home Information Packs (Hips) were launched on August 1 to include properties with 4-bedrooms or more and rolled-out to include 3-bedroom properties on September 10. They were then extended to included all properties on December 14.

They were introduced to speed up the sale of homes and provide buyers with an energy rating for the property they are purchasing.

However, hips have been continuously subject to heavy criticism since they were introduced and now pressure group Splinta has launched a petition to persuade the Government to allow sellers to keep the right to put their home on the market before their Hip is completed.

Splinta, an acronym for Sellers’ Pack Law is not the Answer, has long argued against Hips, which it believes will damange the health of the housing market.

Currently, sellers must commission a Hip before they can put their property on the market but have a 28-day window for it to be completed, however, from June it will have to be completed first.

The Government said the concession was only meant to be temporary.

Splinta wants the current ability to market a property as soon as a Hip has been commissioned - so-called ‘first day marketing’ - to be extended. Splinta believes making sellers wait until the pack is completed would unfairly penalise individual homeowners and distort the housing market. It has launched a petition on the 10 Downing Street website, requesting that the regulations not be changed.