Mr Ockenden, director general of the Association of Home Information Pack Providers, was rather disingenuous in his letter about estate agents ‘overcharging’ for HIPs (see [2009] Gazette, 3 September, 11).

The Law Society warned both Yvette Cooper and Mr Ockenden, when together they dumped compulsory HIPs on a collapsing property market in 2007, that HIPs would add a significant layer of costs for consumers but produce no discernible benefit for them. It was always clear that, by making HIPs compulsory (and it was the compulsory element that the Law Society always opposed), some less-reputable estate agents and profiteers would use HIPs to squeeze extra profit out of the consumer and also to redirect other services within the market and produce even greater riches – again at the consumer’s expense. Sadly, as the Which? report exposes, the Law Society was right.

To argue that these extra costs, many of which are deliberately hidden from the consumer, are needed to protect estate agents is a novel one. On Mr Ockenden’s own admission, some estate agents would appear to have such little faith in the ability of some of his members to put together in the correct order photocopied documents inside a coloured envelope, that agents have to charge the consumer an additional fee for having it checked. That says everything about the value of his so-called ‘code’ and the regulation of his members.

As the Which? report makes clear, for accurate and value-for-money HIPs, estate agents need look no further than their local solicitors.

Paul Marsh, immediate past-president, Law Society, Downs Solicitors, Godalming