HIPs and EPC enforcement descends into legal farce.
Here is how Local authority trading standards officers will try to enforce the £700 home information pack regulations. In the Civil courts [not magistrates courts]
To be exempt from Hips and the EPC, you must market your home as for eg, 4 rooms upstairs plus bathroom & en-suite ect, or 3 bedrooms plus study . See post, Yvette Cooper confirms hips avoidance
However you will fall foul of HIPs regulations, if you market your home as having, 4 bedrooms, 5 bedrooms ect. See what-is-a-4-bedroom-plus-home. Why pay £700 for what is in effect nothing of any value.
Have a read of this,16 April 2007 Submission from Wendy Martin, Director of Policy, Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services
The enforcement provisions are problematic and will exacerbate the effectiveness of these regulations in delivering government policy.
LACORS strongly lobbied for the breaches of the regulations to be a criminal offence (in the same way as other consumer protection law, including offences by estate agent for misdescribing property) and to use fixed penalty charges which can be enforced in the Magistrates Courts if people refuse to pay (in the same way as for littering, graffiti, sales of alcohol to children etc).
This was rejected and instead local authorities are left with the only enforcement tool being a £200 penalty that is only enforceable through the civil courts. We feel this level of penalty is very low to provide an incentive for compliance.
Furthermore we believe it unlikely that local authorities will pursue non-payments of the fines because civil court action is expensive, and local authority trading standards staff have no rights of audience in the County Court, whereas they do in the Magistrates Court, meaning they have to pay for lawyers to attend court.
In addition, the HIPs regulation enforcement provisions mean that if a trading standards officer carries out any routine checks or follow up complaints where it is suggested that someone does not have HIP, then that person is not required to produce one immediately and indeed has 7 days to be able to produce one after a request by a local authority.
Furthermore, a person is not required to comply with such a request if he has a reasonable excuse for not complying”.
So there you have it, this government is so behind HIPs regulations and Hips themselves that Enforcement is a non starter. Perhaps Gordon Brown is waiting for it to implode…
Sources for this article, List of HIPs evidence the Government ignored including “Which” Rics, Lacors [trading standards].
HIPs debate and Trading standards debate makes compelling reading.
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trading standards on hipsFiled under: Home information packs, energy performance certificate, hips, hips news, hips-sellers-packs, home information pack providers, home-information -pack, homeowner information packs, sellers pack
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