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A really interesting discussion on Home Information Packs and Condition Reports was held yesterday and the Hansard report makes for good reading!

Baroness Andrews was the lady with the bombardment and aerial assault of questions from both Baroness Sharples (Con), Lord Marsh (crossbench), Baroness Maddock (LibDem)and Lord Dixon-Smith (Con, Shadow Minister, CLG).

Anyway some bullet-points:

642,551 HIPs have been produced from 1 Aug 07 to 1 May 08

1,776 HCRs have been lodged in total on the HCR Register as of 1 May 08 (I believe that 1,313 were those HCRs lodged during the pilot run from 6 Nov 06 and 31 Oct 07 which is the number referred to on page 9 of this Summary Document produced by Ipsos MORI entitled Home Information Pack Area Trials - Research Report) This would then mean that only 463 paid for HCRs have been commissioned since 1 November 07 until 1 May 08, this is a rate of just 17 per week. These numbers may in fact be a touch high since I have erred on the side of caution with my dates and numbers. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that at this time, the actual numbers of HCRs being commissioned is less than 17 per week.

Estate agents mislead the public! Lord Lea of Crondall (Labour) My Lords, I assure my noble friend that despite the impression created in some quarters that home information packs have no friends in the country at all, these are very widely seen as an enormous advantage in dealing with estate agents, who are not normally known for putting the whole truth on their prospectuses. History will show that a variation of the present home information pack, if not the exact one, is here to stay, and the professionals in the industry really ought to start to get behind it and realise that it is in the interests of everyone in lubricating the buying and selling of houses.

Search costs are falling Baroness Andrews (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government. My Lords, my noble friend is quite right: the point is that the industry is now behind it. There is no doubt about that. We have seen what we thought would happen; the introduction of HIPs is driving changes across the market. For example, the cost of searches has gone down on average by 30 and in some instances by 120. As I have said, we have 700,000 energy performance certificates. People are acting on those changes, and, at a time when energy bills are inevitably going up, how much better it is that we give them information on which they can bring down their costs.

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