Information Gathered From Hips

At Last he U.K s new coalition government has abolished the requirement for Home Information Packs as part of the deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. However, as this requirement is tied to European directives, sellers will still need to provide an official energy efficiency assessment of their property.
To streamline the home buying and selling system in the U.K, campaigners criticized the HIPs policy ever since it was first suggested by the Labor government, in its manifesto in 1997. Campaigners have said all along that it failed to help home buyers and discouraged people from putting their property on the market as they were not prepared to pay money upfront not knowing whether their house is going to sell or not. This new move should assist make moving a bit cheaper. Moreover, Hips only lasted six months so if a home was put on the market and there were no takers within that time another had to be obtained or some of its components had to be updated.
Before being gradually rolled out across the rest of the market, Hips were first introduced in August 2007 for properties with four or more bedrooms in England and Wales. To buy and sell a home by providing buyers with more of the information they needed up front, they aimed to reduce the amount of time it took. Before home owners in England and Wales could begin marketing their home, they had to have a pack in place from April last year.
To build up a valuation database, the last government was also using the information gathered from Hips. The Tories claim that the previous Government had planned to use HIPs to help justify a rise in council tax by establishing a central database of information about properties.
To push up council tax bills, Labour planned to use Home Information Packs. Gordon Brownss ministers meant to collect details from the packs and add them to the state database used for calculating the tax, previously secret documents reveal. As the Government prepared moves likely to specify the end of Hips. The packs were introduced in 2007 in the name of helping homebuyers. However, most of the information they were supposed to contain, such as the structural quality of the house, was stripped out in the fact that surrounded their launch.
The Labour government wanted Hips to become a home information tax. Homeowners would pay to have their home inspected and information would then be used to increase their council tax bills by stealth.