Those who gambled on a nice income from carrying out HIPs inspections are facing a bleak future.
The Government’s Home Information Packs (Hips) scheme has created an “industry with no work”, with thousands of home inspectors facing indefinite unemployment.
Little more than a week after the introduction of Hips for houses with four or more bedrooms, many inspectors are abandoning the profession, it can be revealed.
No date has yet been set for Hips to apply to the rest of the housing market and loopholes in the legislation allowing homeowners to avoid the packs have left thousands of inspectors with the prospect of little, if any, work. Most of the 3,000-strong task force have yet to complete a single job.
I have some sympathy with their plight. I gambled on a profession that has seen me facing a bleak future. However, I wonder if I would have gambled £12,000 on training fees based upon a government scheme that was flawed from the start. HIPs was trialled in Bristol on a voluntary basis. The outcome of that trial was that the perceived benefits were at best, mixed.
One of the proposed benefits was that prospective buyers would be spared the expense of one or more valuation surveys and that the vendor would pay for just the one. As a principle it seemed a good idea as everyone would be saved money in the long run, particularly if the buyer goes through several prospective purchases that subsequently fall through. Once it became obvious that the buyer’s lenders still sought their own valuation surveys, HIPs became a pointless exercise. Knowing this, the government went ahead anyway. One wonders sometimes why they indulge in such things as consultation and trials if they are going to ignore the resultant message.
Knowing this – or they damn well should have known this – the prospective inspectors put their money down. It was a risk. A poor one as it turned out. The lesson here is to be very wary of spending one’s own money on government schemes.
Please forgive my almost complete lack of sympathy for those losing money in becoming HIP inspectors. I would have a similar lack of sympathy for those companies which, if our rulers had any financial nous, would be losing money hand over fist for getting involved in the numerous IT fiascos masterminded by incompetents in the public sector. But back to the HIPs inspectors: they went into this with their eyes open: they must have known that the HIP arrangements were useless, expensive and no answer to the problem they were set up to cure (ie gazumping). The HIPs regime is a waste of everybody’s money and time. The inspectors not only knew this, they invested their own money in training to obtain a certificate to profit from this gross waste of money. They are now crying foul. This is the mentality of those who expect sympathy for losing money in a Ponzi scheme and whose only motive for entering the scheme in the first place was to screw people further down the line. Yes, the government is to blame for this whole fiasco but, without the inspectors volunteering to do its dirty work in the expectation of ample reward, the government would be powerless to implement its “policy”.
The government is NOT free to abandon HIPS, as they came about due to EU directive 2002/91 on “the energy performance of buildings” – along with the usual gold-plating. The energy certification is therefore a matter of EU law which is supreme over British law. The delays in implementation are only temporary, and we will soon be stuck with the useless HIPs. A full and binding survey (backed by insurance) would have been the only sensible part – if it had actually been included, which quite plainly it is not. Government, the EU, and HIPs are all intrusive, ineffective, costly, and serve no real purpose.
Paul C
You’re absolutely right, it is the government’s fault for goldplating a useless (but irresistible) EU regulation and being dishonest enough not to admit this. However, no government can succeed if there are not people out there to do its dirty work: if there were no inspectors there would be no HIPs and no energy certificates either.
So… You think I was too gentle, then?
LR
It would be invidious of me to comment on your technique!