Clause 7Contents of sellers' packs
Homes Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman is certain getting good press from Opposition Members.
I have a letter from a Mr. Rendell, who works for a company called Convey Direct. The letter is sent from an address in Bristol and, of course, Mr. Rendell talked about the Bristol pilot scheme. Rather fascinatingly, he says of the scheme that:
The trial was in my view, carried out on a misconception i.e. that by the time the scheme was launched all Local Authorities would be on line. If that were the case i.e. so that searches could be obtained ``at the click of a mouse'' then frankly there seems little to be gained by making a search weeks, months, in advance of the sale. Besides, the Local Search is a highly technical document.
He says that
it is unrealistic to think that the searches will be on line before 2003—
the date by which the Minister hopes to implement the legislation. His letter continues:
What we will therefore have is a situation where the searches alone may take two to three weeks.
Then—this is a fascinating observation from one who was there—Mr. Rendell says
This was ``massaged'' in the Bristol Pilot because Bristol Council agreed to give priority to all Sellers Pack searches, returning them within 48 hours.
I was not aware of that until I saw that letter. If that is true—and I have no reason to believe that it is not—it puts another twist on the pilot results. Rather fetchingly, Mr. Rendell notes:
This is not the real world but it helped to contribute to the suggestion that Sellers Packs could be prepared in the space of 10 days.
He makes the further important point that
The pack will have no value unless the Condition Report is acceptable to Purchasers.
He goes on to say that, even in the pilot scheme, houses were
surveyed not once or twice but three times i.e. once for the Sellers pack, once for the Lender and once for the Purchaser.
Mr. Rendell also talks about speeding up conveyancing. We all know that electronic technology will speed up the process and make it more effective, but it is rather worrying, to say the least, that he does not believe that it will be possible to implement the scheme within the proposed time scale.
I have talked about local authority searches and the home condition report. Our position on those matters is clear and amendments Nos. 5 and 7 touch on that. The only other amendment to which I need to speak is amendment No. 40, a probing amendment that seeks to establish what warranties or guarantees on property are involved. We want it to be clear that only warranties or guarantees relating to the physical state of the property—structure, repairs, damp work and so on—are involved, not those relating to equipment.