In a statement to the House of Lords Baroness Deech gave her proper concerns regarding the Home information pack and The Energy performance certificate. Take a moment to read this.

Remember to get around HIPs and Epc regulations; your home has Rooms not bedrooms.

Baroness Deech (Crossbench) My Lords, perhaps I could try to dispel some of the ill tempered comments about the professions. My interest is that I used to teach property law, so I hope that I have sufficient detachment to see the effect of property law on buying and selling.

I want to make a few short points. The first is that, given the difficulties that I have described, there is now no point in the HIP in itself, if we leave to one side the energy performance certificate.

 In the next few months, the situation will be, especially for first-time buyers, even more costly, stressful, complicated and deceptive.

It is hoped that the energy performance certificate will lead to savings in energy costs, but the cost of the certificate, will not be recovered for something like nine years; the financial outlay that buyers and sellers will have to make now will not be recovered for a long time, by when there will no doubt be other energy considerations.

Another point is that, if the certificate is to be provided every time the house is sold, in many cases this will be too often—that is, less than 10 years.

However, some people do not sell their family home for 20, 30 or 40 years, in which case there will be no energy inducement; there will be no need to get a certificate and no need to think about energy improvements. Tacking on the energy certificate to house sale does not make sense.

Finally, I was not reassured in studying the material before the committee that there will be sufficient checks on those who make the energy inspection.

I did not think that the qualifications and security issues attaching to those people who enter the house were sufficiently taken into account.

There seemed to be no assurance that the accuracy and helpfulness of the energy certificate would be properly checked.

In other words, the certificate might not be worth the paper it was written on, even if all the training goes forward; there is not yet sufficient infrastructure for that.

| Hansard source 22nd may 2007