Helping Innovate Property (HIP) – Blog, Housing Market News and Articles

The Daily Express have responded to complaints about an article where they discussed the possibility of becoming a property professional including various roles within the energy assessor industry. We recently wrote about the complaints raised, Training as a property professional – energy assessors express outrage.

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Domestic Energy Assessors are wondering if there will be ever any reporting of their industry that they feel represents ‘real’ life by the main stream journalists after an article in the Daily Express.

The Daily Express recently publish an ‘article’ by Ben West titled ‘Assess your options’ with prominent advertising and details of training companies offering the energy assessor training courses. The ‘article’ has caused widespread dismay from many existing energy assessors as they feel it does not portray an accurate picture of the ‘needs’ of the market place.

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Quidos’s report was initially distributed to over 4000 contacts on Monday, including commercial property agents, Trading Standards offices, commercial energy assessors, accreditation schemes, Government departments (CLG and DECC) and industry press.

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Mr Philip Salaman managing director of Quidos has kindly obliged to answers a few of our questions.

Q 1 NHER produced some great research in relation to non-compliance of Commercial EPCs recently. Do you have any other similar research you are undertaking at present and when could we expect to see the results?

We have conducted recent research into commercial buildings EPC compliance in the South West England area. We have very accurate statistics on the number of commercial properties on the market, and we cross referenced that data against the Landmark database. 73% did not have EPC’s.

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If you have a boiler and heating system older than about 10 years you really should consider upgrading the boiler and hopefully the following will provide some food for thought.

As gas and electric prices continue to rise with recent reports that they could possibly be 60 % higher by 2020 if not sooner. Now is the time to look at both your consumption and the efficiency of your heating system.

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With the conservative’s conference now finished and the focussed rallying of political troops coming to a natural lull we now see further reflection of the speeches and recently published papers.

Grant Shapps always provides some interest though feel he often lacks solid reasoning and/or alternatives to areas he dislikes. He is undoubtedly advised on certain areas though in regard to Home Information Packs and Energy Performance Certificates he just seems to be taking a ‘party line’; stating what he hopes the nation wants to hear.

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Welcome to Mike Ockenden, Chairman of the Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP) who has kindly agreed to spread a bit of light on how he sees the past and future of all things HIP related.
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One of the ‘cheapest’ Home Information Pack (HIP) providers who were favourably named in last months edition of Which have ‘withdrawn’ from the HIP market.

This demise has been inevitable for many of the cheap HIP providers including Promise Home Packs and we highlighted concerns last month in the article ‘Be aware of cheap, budget HIP & EPC providers‘. Promise are not the first HIP supplier to have left the market and certainly will not be the last.

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The Conservative party has made no pretence about its desire to ‘scrap’ Home Information Packs (HIPs) should as is likely it gain power in spring of next year. Is this a credible policy which can be backed with intellectual argument or is it simply an easy way of trying to win the populist vote?

In this article I will look at both sides of the argument and will, despite my vested interest in seeing the HIP retained, try and provide a balanced analysis of the issues.

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Cheap Home Information Pack (HIP) and Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) providers in the market place, are unfortunately not delivering the promised service or product at times, within the timescales agreed. It has been brought to our attention that a number of companies are taking excessive time to deliver or arrange EPCs, some have not received their HIP or EPC at all as the company has gone into liquidation and ceased trading.

Recently, we have received numerous calls from anxious concerned people who were looking for advice on what they could do in their specific problematic scenarios plus people who thought they had instructed us to carry out their HIP and/or EPC, when infact they had opted for a ‘cheap HIP provider‘.

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The Energy Saving Trust (EST) is close to be given access to the data gathered from Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) and this was recently outlined in the summary of responses to ‘The Next Steps: EPCs and the establishment of the Green Homes Service consultation.’

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