Hip view (Home Information Packs and Energy Performance Certificates EPC

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.

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.

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

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

In the continuing struggle by personal search companies to gain their legally entitled access to environmental information, the Basildon office of PALI (Property And Land Information) lodged a complaint against Maldon Council for refusing access to Building Control records and charging to provide information contained there in. Jeremy Tyler of the Basildon office complained that Maldon were operating restrictive practices as the information he was requesting access to was environmental and should be available to the public free of charge. The council disputed this and continued to refuse access to the information. Jeremy requested that his complaint be entered into the councils complaints review process. Maldon re-iterated its refusal so Jeremy reported the council to The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) which rules on these matters.

As the ICO had already ruled on two similar cases 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 Maldon.
The full report and decision by the ICO can be read on this blog by
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.

Nick Small of Pali Ltd Merseyside, The PALI head office said “This is good news for the Personal Search Companies and Home Information Pack ( HIP ) providers, We at PALI are determined to keep our prices as competitive as possible for the benefit of the consumer and our clients. The price rises imposed by the councils since April this year have had the effect of forcing up the cost of searches and Home Information Packs ( Hips )’.

The proposed doubling of the charges to access the Land Charges registers by councils in January will further drive up these cost so it is important that we make a stand against abuses of monopoly positions, restrictive practises, restraint of trade and illegal charges. Various offices of PALI have similar complaints lodged with the ICO currently and are hopeful of similar decisions. These will be reported on this blog as and when they are published.

Decision Notice

#ukgovOSS

In a case that will have a bearing on the UK ICO decission regarding the current claims by search companies that all information required to produce local searches is environmental and should be free the Dutch Council of State ruled that Amsterdam City cannot charge for the reuse of information.

More about the Court decision:

The Judicial Division of the Dutch Council of State (Raad van State), the highest Administrative Court in the Netherlands, on 29 April 2009 published a ruling on the public sector information re-use case Landmark versus City of Amsterdam.

The Court rejected the appeal lodged by the City for high compensation costs for supplying information costs for supplying environmental information to real estate agents for the benefit of home owners and home buyers through Landmark Nederland’s Milieuscan environmental reports service.

The dispute between Landmark and the City concerns the question whether the City could attach a number of conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark. Two conditions must be fulfilled: there must be a database and the government agency must be the producer of that database.

The Court ruled that, while the data form a database because there has been a substantial investment, the City of Amsterdam does not bear the risk of this substantial investment, and is therefore not a producer of the database. Consequently the City is not entitled to attach the excessive (financial) conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark.

More about Landmark:

Landmark Nederland is part of Landmark Information Group Ltd which is a Daily Mail and General Trust Group company. Landmark provides over 1 million environmental and of land use reports a year for homebuyers and property professionals in Europe. Landmark operates in Germany via its company based in Dortmund, Inframation AG.

Since the new regulations came into effect on 6th April 2009 making it compulsory for Local Authorities to give access to property information, there has been a vast spectrum of systems and charges created by Local Authorities to cope. The procedures set out by councils enabling people to gain access to the information range from the very simple, e.g. turn up at a building, sit at a computer, record the information and leave, to the most complicated systems imaginable. Likewise the charges also differ massively ranging from, free to over three hundred pounds.

In many cases the job of accessing this information has now become almost impossible and we have created this post to enable you to leave comments on your findings with specific Local Authorities either good or bad. Please click the button below to either view comments left by others or post a new one. It will help if you name the council, but please be certain that your statement is correct.

Unbelievably with only two weeks to go until 6th April many Local Authorities have still not released their pricing structure for access to Con 29 data. As this affects the whole of the property market, it is truly astounding that they have been allowed to do this.

From 6th April, a residential property can not be marketed until the majority of a Home Information Pack ( HIP )  is in place. If by this time the remaining councils still have not released their pricing structures the housing market could be thrown into chaos. How can you order a HIP if you or your supplier don’t know how much it will cost?

Is this a deliberate move by councils to cause disruption within the Personal Search and Home Information Pack industry or are they simply so inefficient that they cannot meet governments deadlines even with months of prior notice?