David Jones, MP

In a couple of weeks, we will be moving house.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to it terribly, although I know it’s time to go: our house, which served us well while the boys were growing up, and of which we have many so happy memories, is now just too big.  So, yes, it is time to move on.

Moving house is a terrifically disruptive business; I’m told it’s the third most stressful event in life, after death and divorce.  All that paperwork, all those boxes, all that chaos.  But, still, we are moving and are looking forward to a summer sharing our new home with builders, electricians, plumbers and decorators.  There’s a lot of work to be done.  I only hope that, at the end of it all, it’ll be worth it.

At the start of the process of selling our house, we had to pay for a Home Information Pack.  It cost over £300, which Sara paid while I was in London, and for which I keep meaning to reimburse her.  A man with a clipboard came round one afternoon to carry out the inspection.  The HIP, when it arrived, told us nothing we didn’t know already.  The Energy Performance Certificate (required as a consequence of a European directive) informed us that the house is not terribly energy efficient.  Given that the property was built over 150 years ago with walls of solid stone, it didn’t come as a huge surprise.  Neither, I imagine, did it surprise our buyers.

HIPs were, of course, meant to speed up conveyancing, by providing buyers with a complete set of pertinent information at the start of the sale process.  Did it work in our case?  Not really; our buyers’ solicitors decided, quite rightly, to commission their own search, on the basis that the search provided by the HIP company was a personal one, not issued by the council’s local land charges department.  They also raised a number of pre-contract enquiries in addition to the standard ones we had answered.   There were also further delays, with which I shall not bore you.  In all, it took some ten weeks before contracts were exchanged.

The HIP didn’t help at all; it was still a painful process.  The £300 odd that we stumped up was a straightforward waste of money for which we feel we had nothing in return.

This week, our removal man came round to assess the job.  Naturally, he mentioned the election and said he was delighted that the Conservatives had promised to abolish HIPs.  “They’ve cost me loads of money,” he said.  “People didn’t want to pay for them in a difficult housing market, so they just made things worse.  More houses should go on the market if HIPs are scrapped; people should start moving again.”

Yesterday, we delivered on our pledge.  My colleague, Grant Shapps, the Housing minister, announced that the need for buyers to commission HIPs has been suspended pending legislation for their permanent abolition.

Too late for me (or for Sara), I’m afraid, but still in good time to boost the spring selling season.