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I remember HIPS and they could have been a good thing. However they were watered down as any physical property inspection was taken out of the equation. Also the HIPS were generally instructed by estate agents to companies they had a relationship with who compiled sometimes completely wrong information and did not understand the information. More often than not you ended up with an incomplete pack that nobody with any legal knowledge or training had put together. They were in the main worthless.

As another poster has alluded should upfront information catch on we will be left with the same old vested interests scrambling around for business and producing information they do not understand and which has not been properly reviewed.

For it to work they have to be compiled by proper law firms by which I mean not those who only get the work because they pay a referral fee and who then pile paralegals high. That is not a solution. It is simply dressing the same problem up in different clothes. Law firms should be instructed by sellers with no input from estate agents. That is what would best protect the interests of clients and should result in any potential issues with the paperwork being spotted as part of the process. Sadly that is not what we will end up with.

Conveyancing is a pretty murky world these days. What might be legal may not necessarily be right.