Centuries of British tradition has been swept away because a builder was just too cheeky. Robert Fidler (real name), 60, secretly built his dream home and cunningly hid it behind tarpaulin, disguising it as a haystack. He lived in it for four years. It was a flagrant attempt to take advantage of a loophole in local planning regulations which, in theory, means that buildings erected without permission to be declared legal if no objections are made after four years.

He even allowed a TV programme to be made about the castle.

But a judge in the High Court ruled that the building, near Redhill, Surrey was unlawful and that Fidler could not benefit from his deception. The castle, its conservatory, marquee, bridge, patio, decking and tarmac racecourse (yes really) will now be knocked down.
“This was a blatant attempt to flout the law,” said a spokesman for Reigate and Banstead Borough Council. Mr Fidler will of course, appeal.

The Association of Independent Personal Search Agents (IPSA) welcomes the findings of the Property Codes Compliance Board (PCCB) independent assessment into personal searches, but issues a warning to property professionals.

The PCCB investigation, which materialised from complaints made by those with a vested interest in undermining the private search industry, has highlighted that the initial PCCB assumption that Local Authority compiled searches could set a quality benchmark for private searches to be judged against was clearly incorrect.

Steve Davies, IPSAs CEO stated “IPSA welcomes the PCCB admittance that personal search reports compiled by its members under the IPSA Code Compliant and SearchCode schemes are every bit as accurate as Local Authority compiled searches.”

The detailed PCCB investigation via spot checks and involving Trading Standards Officers of over 900 search answers revealed no significant differences between the two types of report.

Christian Lister, IPSAs Chairman added “IPSA members are however still appalled by the heavy handed and accusatory stance taken by the PCCB in this investigation, which has alienated them even further from the IPSA membership and therefore today IPSA must issue a warning to Estate Agents and the Property Ombudsman to consider very carefully the PCCB proposal to take control and initiate doorstep and desktop compliance inspections of all Estate Agents.”

The PCCB has done nothing to combat the real problems facing the industry, by accepting unlawful charging for data and allowing industry debts by logo using accredited companies to spiral out of control, leaving the consumer with Home Information Packs that contain unusable documents.

No Sale No Fee HIPs – Free HIP if your Home Does Not Sell Within 9 Months

No Sale No Fee Home Information Packs are now available from Pali via Hipview.

Pali have been offering a deferred payment option now on Home Information Packs ordered through Hipview for over 12 months. You can now add an insurance policy to the deferred payment solution meaning that should the property remain on the market in excess of 9 months the HIP won’t cost a penny.

If you or your client choose the No Sale No Fee option when ordering the Home Information Pack the only initial cost will be £30. If the property sells within 9 months the HIP is payable on completion, but if it remains on the market for longer than nine months then any direct costs incurred for the HIP can be claimed back and what’s more, the HIP should still be valid.

For more information please telephone 0151 691 1170 or email nick@paliltd.com

Terms and Conditions:

There are some key conditions to the policy which should noted:
• The HIP Provider/ Estate Agent must note any recommendation to alter the sale price of the property made by the Estate Agent and Seller
• The Seller must comply with any advice given by the Estate Agent to reduce the price of the property and may not reject two or more offers within 90% of the asking price
• The HIP Provider/Estate Agent must note the rejection of any offer made on the property
• The property must be continually marketed during the period of insurance
• The property must be kept in a good state of repair
• The Property is a single private residential house or flat which is build complete at the order date.
• The Home Information Pack for which this cover is required has been produced in accordance with the relevant Home Information Pack Regulations.
• The Seller is not aware of any matter which could lead to a claim under the Policy.

A full set of Terms and Conditions will be provided with the Insurance Guarantee and are also available on request, or by clicking here.

For more information please contact your local Pali office or email: nick@paliltd.com or telephone 0151 691 1170 or visit our webpage.

In 2009 allegations were made of malpractice within the Personal Search Industry. The allegations were mainly made by opponents of the industry and were that the reports prepared by Personal Search Companies were inferior in quality to council searches and more widespread concern that certain firms were knowingly not buying all the required data or failing to access legitimate sources of information. In October, November and December 2009 the PCCB (Property Codes Compliance Board) carried out thorough investigations of its Code Subscribers with regards to these allegations.

Frank Finch of the PCCB today made the following statement:

‘In summary, the enquiry found no evidence to support the allegation of widespread non-compliance. Rather it confirmed that the searches sampled were substantially compliant with the relevant regulations and with the Search Code.’

A total of 58 searches, comprising 900 questions were scrutinised, with errors being found in just 3% of answers and none of these related to the substantive allegations that data was either missing or inappropriate data was being used.

Finch went on to comment on the errors by saying that they

‘Appear to result from a lack of diligence rather than deliberate attempts to short-circuit the provisions in the Code. This is borne out by the fact that these failings featured in searches conducted by both personal search firms and local authorities in roughly equal measure.’

In fact, over half of all errors or omissions identified in the exercise related to local authority reports.

This goes to prove that Council Searches are no more reliable than those provided by firms who subscribe to the Search Code.

Grant Shapps, the “campaigner” has carried out yet another PR stunt. This time he wrapped a house in red tape in an attempt to highlight the bureaucracy of the home information packs.

The owners of the home, David and Helen Wright, where apparently released from their “red tape hell” by the hero Shapps. Apparently they went on to sell their house due to the publicity received; I bet they had no complaints about the speedy completion process.

Hips 1 – Shapps 0.

Some of you may remember previous Shapps Stunts. He slept homeless on the streets in London on Christmas Eve in London to highlight the problems of the homeless, well Mr Shapps it is a shame that did not solve the problem of homelessness and scrapping the HIP’s will not solve the Recession.

With buy now pay nothing until completion Hips that are exchange ready from PALI the house selling and purchasing process has never been so quick and cheap. Hips are floored, they need fixing, not scrapping.

 

 

As you are probably aware the VAT rate will be increasing back to 17.5% from 1st January 2010. Our prices will therefore be increased where applicable. In addition to this some Local Authorities are increasing their Land Charges fees.

To see how the price of the Local Authority Search in your area will be affected please: CLICK HERE

The new prices of our most popular additional searches will be:

£55.00 - Residential Drainage and Water Searches
£  7.53 - HMLR Office Copy Registers and Title Plans
£33.50 - Copy of Lease
£49.00 - Groundsure Residential Environmental Report (Home Buyers Review)
£39.84 - Residential Coal Mining and Cheshire Brine Search
£23.50 - ChancelCheck Search 

All prices above are inclusive of VAT

For a full price list please contact your local Pali office or email jo@paliltd.com

The Association of Independent Personal Search Agents (IPSA) has today completed a partial survey of its members in relation to their combined burden of bad debt. The survey has revealed the amount IPSA members have written-off since the introduction of Home Information Packs due to non-payment, liquidation, alleged fraudulent trading and improper business conduct.

Christian Lister, IPSA Chairman is shocked by the results, he commented; ‘The results are horrific especially when the majority of the debt instigators were PCCB registered or members of a hip trade association displaying the HIP Code logo. Allowing for the fact that these are only interim figures* with some members yet to finalise their losses the total number could well exceed seven figures. These institutions set industry standards and are there to give the consumer confidence in the quality of the product they are purchasing.’

Home Information Pack providers are at the frontline in dealing with consumers, mostly taking payment for goods up-front. ‘Some of these
companies have left a trail of destruction in their wake,’ stated IPSA member Steve Davies. He continued: ‘As search agents we are required to pay for Professional Indemnity Insurance as protection for all consumers using our services. All of these failed HIP companies have left their suppliers with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of unpaid bills, which raises the issue of the title of goods being called into question.’

The auditable figure of £779,561.30* if divided by the average cost of a member’s search fee would mean that insurers have not passed title on these unpaid goods, leaving an estimated 7796 Local Authority Searches within Home Information Packs uninsured.

‘This is a consumer’s worst nightmare,’ said Christian, ‘and I believe the PCCB and hip trade associations must now stand on their key message of consumer protection and investigate the implications of this to the general public at large. I will not accept that this situation is, as one trade association Director is reported to have remarked ‘it’s just business’. It’s almost criminal and something must be done

Another week and another victory for PALI in their continuing struggle to gain their legally entitled access to environmental information. The Basildon office of PALI (Property And Land Information) lodged a second complaint, this time against Tendring District Council for refusing access to Building Control records and charging to provide the information. In line with their previous complaint against Maldon Council, Jeremy Tyler of the Basildon office complained that Tendring were operating restrictive practices as the information he was requesting access to was environmental and should be available to the public free of charge under European law. The council disputed this and continued to refuse access to the information. Jeremy went as far as he could with internal complaints and during lengthy email exchanges, Tendring re-iterated its refusal so Jeremy reported the council to The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) which rules on these matters.

The ICO contacted the Council giving them ample time to change their mind, which the Council refused to do, therefore, inline with two similar cases that the ICO has ruled on, it was expected that the ruling would be in line with these previous rulings. That is in fact what happened and the ruling was in favour of PALI and against firstly Maldon and now Tendring.

This latest decision by the ICO can be read on this blog CLICKING HERE.

In summary the decision was that the information requested was environmental and access should be freely available at a point designated for that purpose and within a reasonable time scale.

Jeremy Tyler, Director of PALI Basildon said, “This may be the battle won but not the war, it is going to take time to get all councils complying with the law, this is an abuse of power and we will do all we can to ensure that councils work within its remit and do not abuse their powers.”

Decision Notice