Estate Agent Today

The Parliamentary Ombudsman is to be asked to rule on whether the thousands of Home Inspectors who paid for training should be given compensation.

They would want compensation for the costs of their training and loss of earnings which had been promised, but failed to materialise after the Government’s U-turn on mandatory Home Condition Reports.

The then housing minister Yvette Cooper told Parliament at that time: “The Government’s policy is that mandatory HCRs remain on the table if the industry fails to make a success of the roll-out of HCRs. We will promote the voluntary take-up of HCRs, and have allocated £4m to support their take-up and testing of Home Information Packs. Therefore, Home Inspectors will still be needed and job opportunities for Home Inspectors remain for those who have undertaken training.”

But Home Inspectors say that voluntary take-up has never been promoted and they believe the Government lied.

A new association is being formed, the Residential Property Surveyors Association (RPSA), to take on the fight.

It is one of four associations to come under the umbrella of the Federation of Property Information Providers, headed by Mike Ockenden of AHIPP, and Kate Nicholls, of the personal search trade body COPSO. The remaining organisation is Property and Energy Professionals Association.

Ockenden said the fight to win compensation for Home Inspectors was deadly serious and he saw no reason why it would not end in victory.

He said: “On July 18, 2006, the Government did a U-turn and made Home Condition Reports voluntary. However, both Yvette Cooper and her successor, Caroline Flint, stressed that mandatory HCRs would remain on the table if voluntary take-up was insufficient.

“Voluntary take-up has been negligible but subsequent housing ministers – Margaret Beckett and now John Healey – have given up saying that they are on the table.

“About 6,000 people had paid money, typically £10,000, to become Home Inspectors. They did so because the Government specifically created a career opportunity. Having paid all that money, they found there was no job for them to do.”

Ockenden said the new RPSA body had only just been launched but already had 130 members “with applications coming in daily”.

“When RPSA gets to critical mass – say 250 – we will engage a barrister. We will do the whole thing properly.”

He said three routes were open to the Home Inspectors: a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman; a class action suing the British Government; and a case claiming breach of the EU Human Rights Act.

“We will go first to the Ombudsman. Precedent has now been set [on pensions] that he does have the power to order Parliament to act. He may well find that people were disadvantaged by the Government U-turn and that the Government has obligations to meet.”

Ockenden also said it was a nonsense that you could not take action against a Government of a different political hue than the one that had made the U-turn.

“The Government of the day is the Government,” he said.

Ockenden also said he would take legal advice if the Tories do go ahead with abolishing HIPs.

“I think there are a lot of ifs, ands and buts concerning their alleged determination to do this,” he said. “It is not going to be high up on the agenda and the summer recess will not be far behind the election. There will have to be a consultation, and every answer to that consultation will have to be considered. It will be at least next year before HIPs could possibly be abolished.

“I am not making an idle threat: we simply want to do the right thing.”