Home Information Packs (HIPs)

If, like me, you have just moved house you will welcome the plan from Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, to scrap HIPs after the next general election.

As he writes this weekend; “Next week marks the second anniversary of when Home Information Packs became mandatory. Just to recap, what this discredited HIP law does is to ensure that anyone wanting to sell their house has to first reckon on shelling out several hundred pounds to comply with this much ridiculed red-tape. It is now illegal to place a For Sale sign in front of your own home without first having this expensive paperwork in place. Weary sellers have little choice but to sigh at yet another piece of burdensome bureaucracy, suffer the delay and stump up the cash. During the past couple of years I've faced four different Housing Ministers across the Despatch Box and have presented each with compelling evidence demonstrating not only that HIPs aren't working, but that they are actively causing harm to an already embattled housing market.”

HIPs have made moving house even more expensive and difficult. Grant is right to say that the HIPs debacle has become shorthand for a government that has run out of ideas and should now be run out of office.