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.

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

Charges for access to publicly held information

As most of you will now be aware, since 6^th April and in some cases before this date councils have been charging for access to information held on behalf of the public.

The charging rules state that councils should only charge for costs directly incurred in providing the refined data, not for access, and only on a cost recovery basis. In most cases this actually means that councils could not charge for access to the information, which is what search companies want. To get round this many councils are only making the information available in refined state. They then think that this entitles them to charge for access to the information. In fact they are miss interpreting the rules as they cannot under any circumstances charge for access only for providing the information. Further to this many are providing a one stop shop and providing print outs of the information, adding an administration charge to the cost of the information. This again is against the rules for charging as the cost of providing the information is in fact an administration charge. When Pali asked to see the profit and lose accounts of the land charges departments of various councils they all showed a profit. As the charges should be on a cost recovery basis this is also against the rules as there is no cost to recover. It is quite illuminating when the cost are provided as the councils load every thing they can think of onto the cost of providing the information to the extent that Wirral even list pension contributions, holiday pay and one hundred pounds car allowance for desk bound staff. How they can contribute to the cost of providing access to information when they have retired or are on holiday I don’t know. They have so far not provided the income. The highest legal opinion available currently considers that most if not all the information required to complete a personal search is environmental and therefore should be free to access. Pali’s challenge on this point is currently with the Information Commissioner and Pali is keeping a record of all the illegal charges it is paying. When the ICO rules that the information is environmental Pali will be claiming all the monies back together with damages. Watch this space.

The definition of a monopoly is:
“In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos, alone or single + polein, to sell) exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. Monopolies are thus characterised by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods. The verb “monopolise” refers to the process by which a firm gains persistently greater market share than what is expected under perfect competition.”

The Consultation Paper for Local Authorities (Charges for Property Searches) (England and Wales) has now been passed. The paper can be viewed by CLICKING HERE, the regulations can be viewed HERE and the costing and charging guidance HERE. The big question is however will the Local Authorities adhere to the law? The initial indications are some of them already are not.

‘Cost recovery’ regulations were introduced in 2007 for the LLC1. Previously the LLC1 had a national price of £6.00, however the Government gave councils permission to charge whatever they liked (as long as it was on a cost recovery basis). Many took the opportunity to drastically increase their prices, some in excess of £50.00. As personal search companies often purchased the LLC1 as part of their search, many speculated that this was an underhand way to manipulate Government regulations by local authorities to try and damage personal search companies and potentially put them out of business. There is a growing concern within the personal search industry that the same thing will happen again with the new charging regulations.

Most councils are now starting to release there new pricing structures and are charging to grant access to information required by people to enable them to produce a Personal Local Authority Search. Many are now ignoring current legislation when doing this.

The Directive 2003/4/EC Of The European Parliament And Of The Council of 28 January 2003 is a very interesting document and you can read it by CLICKING HERE. Almost all of the information contained within a Local Authority Search can be classified as environmental. The interesting sections of the Act are:

Article 1 Objectives

The objectives of this Directive are:
(a) to guarantee the right of access to environmental information held by or for public authorities and to set out the basic terms and conditions of, and practical arrangements for, its exercise; and

(b) to ensure that, as a matter of course, environmental information is progressively made available and disseminated to the public in order to achieve the widest possible systematic availability and dissemination to the public of environmental information. To this end the use, in particular, of computer telecommunication and/or electronic technology, where available, shall be promoted.

Article 3 Access to environmental information upon request

5. For the purposes of this Article, Member States shall ensure that:
(a) officials are required to support the public in seeking access to information;
(b) lists of public authorities are publicly accessible; and
(c) the practical arrangements are defined for ensuring that the right of access to environmental information can be effectively exercised, such as:
— the designation of information officers;
— the establishment and maintenance of facilities for the examination of the information required,
— registers or lists of the environmental information held by public authorities or information points, with clear indications of where such information can be found. Member States shall ensure that public authorities inform the public adequately of the rights they enjoy as a result of this Directive and to an appropriate extent

And

Article 5 Charges

1. Access to any public registers or lists established and maintained as mentioned in Article 3(5) and examination in situ of the information requested shall be free of charge.

Another interesting piece of legislation is Freedom of Information Environmental Protection The Environmental Information Regulations 2004. Again CLICK HERE to view it.

I would like to draw your attention to:

Charging

     8.  - (1) Subject to paragraphs (2) to (8), where a public authority makes environmental information available in accordance with regulation 5(1) the authority may charge the applicant for making the information available.

(2) A public authority shall not make any charge for allowing an applicant –
(a) to access any public registers or lists of environmental information held by the public authority; or

(b) to examine the information requested at the place which the public authority makes available for that examination.

All pretty straightforward and undisputable.

Finally now, The Information Commissioner’s Office has issued guidance to help public authorities comply with, the charging regime laid out in Regulation 8 of the Environmental Information Regulations, and in particular what constitutes a reasonable amount. This report can be viewed HERE. The overview of the document states:

• The EIR allow public authorities to charge for making environmental information available, but any such charge must be reasonable.
• In general a reasonable charge is one that covers the actual costs incurred by the public authority in producing the information.
• No charge can be made for inspection of the information or for accessing public registers or lists of environmental information.

The report continues on to say:
When is a charge prohibited?

As mentioned, Regulation 8(2) sets out two circumstances in which no charge can be made:

(a) Access to public registers or lists of environmental information

The intention of this provision is to help members of the public access environmental information by allowing them to see, free of charge, what information is held by a public authority.
One way to do this is for authorities to provide public registers and lists of environmental information which are easy to access and simple to use. They should also provide clear instructions on how to access the information listed. Charging for helping in this way would be incompatible with promoting the right to access environmental information.

Various companies, associations and trade bodies such as Pali, CoPSO, IPSA all intend to start challenging local authorities who make illegal charges for the supply of information to search companies required to provide the public with searches.

Further posts will be made on this blog as this story unfolds.