More on broken HIPs

I have blogged several times about the HIP debacle, see here, here, here, here and here and to be honest I am running out of puns relaing to HIPs but as this government lurches from disaster to disaster over this policy, I have no choice but to carry on.

To recap the government haver decided to delay the introduction of HIPs for two months and then to introduce them (initially) only for the ridiculously wealthy who have a four bedroom house or larger. Of course the government didn't really thisnk this thgrough, if you remove the market for HIPs for two months and so put it into people's minds that you might drop the plan altogether, then companies who have set up to supply energy assessors might re-evaluate their position and so they have. Yesterday the Guardian reported that "Energy-assessors.com said it has laid off around 100 fully trained staff who were due to start providing energy assessments of homes for Hips on June 1." Stephen Callaghan, director of energy-assessors.com, said: "Regrettably, in light of the government's announcement last month on the future of home information packs, our joint venture partners have decided that no further investment in this company is considered appropriate at this uncertain time. We see no future in employing assessors ourselves."

The latest problem to emerge is that energy asessors are looking to the government to reimburse them for their wasted training costs. "Many who spent around £9,000 on training are considering suing the government. Just 18% of houses sold have four or more bedrooms." I read at Burning Your Money that "Total private sector costs are estimated at £100-250m, which means plenty more law suits to come.".

This was a dumb idea, from a dumb government that has cost much money to not setup, will cost more to fully introduce, possibly even more to cancel and will of coursae cost anyone selling a house more money. This government's policies on stamp duty and now this have reduced mobility of labour and constricted the supply of housing onto the market so fuelling the spiralling rise in house prices until the crash comes of course and it's coming. Joined up government; I think not.