OXFORD property experts have given a mixed reaction to news that Britain’s new coalition Government will scrap controversial Home Information Packs.

Estate agents have welcomed the move to abolish HIPs, which provide home buyers with information about the properties they are interested in.

But one specialist provider believes it is a short-sighted move which could cause hundreds of job losses among assessors across the country.

Tom Claridge, who co-founded Botley-based Key Hips in 2007, said: “It is a huge concern for us as HIPs are our primary business. When the Chancellor George Osborne sits down and works out how much it is going to cost and how many people will be made unemployed, I struggle to understand how they can go ahead with it.”

Key Hips won the New Business category of the Oxfordshire Business Awards last year.

It employs 25 staff, and Mr Claridge said redundancies could not be ruled out.

HIPs were introduced in 2007. They aimed to reduce the time it took to buy and sell a home by providing buyers with more of the information they needed up front, such as local authority searches.

Hundreds of assessors retrained to provide HIPs and from April last year, sellers in England and Wales had to have one of the packs before marketing their home.

But estate agents claimed the packs, which cost up to £350, were actually stunting the housing market recovery as they deterred people from putting their home on the market just to test the water.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have pledged to get rid of the packs, but want to retain energy performance certificates, which show how energy efficient a property is.

Mark Charter, head of residential sales at the Summertown office of Carter Jonas, said: “Abolishing HIPs is welcome news because they place an unnecessary burden on the process of selling a house.

“We hope the Government makes this move quickly to remove uncertainty.”

A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government confirmed HIPs were being abolished as a “top priority”.

  • The average price of a house in Oxfordshire rose 0.3 per cent in March to £234,938, according to the Government Land Registry. It was the 10th consecutive monthly rise and represents annual house price inflation of 8.9 per cent.