In article ,
Andy Hall writes:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:57:50 +0100, Andrew Gabriel wrote
(in article ):

The government has abandoned the Home Condition Reports, which
were due to be introduced next year for all house sales in
England and Wales.

Brilliant news.

There seem to be several reasons for this:
Cost of the HIPs (Home Information Packs) was looking like it
was going through the roof;
Nowhere near enough HI's (Home Inspectors) have been trained (I
know from talking with one of the training bodies that almost all
those who came forward for training were completely unsuitable);

It would be interesting to know why they were considered to be unsuitable -

The government assumed people from the building trade would apply
to become HI's. What actually happened was that unskilled people
with no knowledge whatsoever of building construction came forward
for training, and that's not what the training courses were geared
up to deal with. For example, most of them were never going to be
able to be qualified to carry out the SAP assessment, and would
have had to sub-contract it (one reason the price has rocketed).

It should be noted that HIPs are not abandoned yet -- only the
survey element (Home Condition Report). However, strangely, the
SAP evaluation is still in, which is done by the Home Inspectors
during the Home Condition Report inspection. Quite how this is
supposed to work I can't imagine.

It won't. In a few months time, that will be quietly dropped as well.

That's the one part designed to meet an EU directive. I'm sure
we've gold plated it though, just like we normally do.

--
Andrew Gabriel