The Home Condition Report, Home Inspectors and the Home Information Pack

How will the home inspector scheme work

Home Inspectors will need to satisfy a Certification Scheme of their competence, and that they fulfill the criteria to obtain a certificate/licence.

Certification Schemes will be approved by the Secretary of State. A prospective Home Inspector will approach a Certification Scheme, which will check that the person is a fit and proper person who is qualified and insured before admitting them as a member.

Self-regulation by the industry and other key stakeholders endorse the need for a certification regime to protect consumer interests. The Government’s role will be to set the standards that Certification Schemes will be required to deliver, to vet applications from Schemes seeking approval and to monitor Schemes’ ongoing performance.

In October 2005, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) published criteria against which prospective Certification Schemes would be judged for approval. These criteria were revised in March 2006.

Certification Schemes will be required to deliver standards set by DCLG. We expect that schemes will be owned and operated by industry and will work in competition with one another.

Business and Technical Standards are due to be published soon, aimed at defining the essential components of any Certification Schemes and Home Inspector Registers.

The draft standards are currently published on the HICB and Asset Skills websites. All new material will be published on these sites as it becomes available.

Proposed Strategy: Competing Cert Schemes Operating Model

Here is an extract from the DCLG website answering many of the typical frequently asked questions surrounding Certification and HCR databanking issues:

How many Home Inspector and/or Home Condition Report Certification Schemes will need to be ready for Home Information Packs to be introduced in England and Wales?
The number of Certification Schemes will be determined by market forces and the ability to meet the required criteria for approval by the Secretary of State. While a single scheme would be sufficient we anticipate that several schemes will be in operation before mandatory introduction of Home Information Packs.

Will there be a public register of Home Condition Reports?
The Housing Act requires only the registers of Home Inspectors to be publicly available. Access to the Register of Home Condition Reports will be controlled by regulations made under the Housing Act 2004. We anticipate that access rights will include the seller and prospective buyers and mortgage lenders

Who will own the data held in the central Home Condition Report archive register?
If you are referring to the copyright in the Home Condition Report, that would be owned by the Home Inspector or his employer. However, in the Home Information Pack regulations currently being finalised, we intend to prescribe standard terms on which a Home Condition Report must be prepared. Those standard terms will provide that a Home Condition Report may be copied for the purposes of complying with the duties to have or produce a copy of a Home Information Pack.

What information will be held by Certification Schemes?
This will be specified within the standards set by DCLG. It is likely that Certification Schemes will be required to retain proof that they have undertaken the proper checks in relation to a Home Inspector and to hold information pertaining to the individual, contact details, compliance with quality assurance, disciplinary record, etc.

How will the information be collated if stored with various Certification Schemes?
Once a Certification Scheme has undertaken all checks on a Home Information Pack and is content that they meet the requirements, that Home Inspector will be added to the public Home Inspector register belonging to that Certification Scheme. DCLG will procure a portal service, which acts as an index across all Home Inspector registers to provide a single point of searching for the consumer.

How much information from the Home Condition Report will be used by Government?
Access to the Home Condition Report register is intended essentially for purposes connected with the efficient and smooth running of the transaction process. We intend therefore that access should be available to sellers and buyers and their professional advisers, and also to lenders and enforcement authorities.

What data has to be lodged on a Certification Scheme’s register?
In respect of Home Inspectors, Certification Schemes will be required to acquire (electronically or otherwise) sufficient information to prove that they have undertaken the checks required of them regarding an individual requesting to become a Home Inspectors. Certification Schemes are required to hold a public register of their members.

In respect of Home Condition Reports, Certification Schemes will be required to store all data on each Home Condition Report on their Home Condition Report register. Sufficient data must be stored on a Certification Scheme register to enable appropriate messages to be generated to the Home Condition Report register archive and to respond to messages received from other parties such as lenders etc.

Is the standard for lodging the Home Condition Report data from the Home Inspectors to be electronic?
Certification Schemes can choose to capture Home Condition Report information any way they see fit. However, they must be able to generate and respond to messages as defined within the technical standards to be made available by DCLG in May 2006.

How can errors with the data be updated once lodged?
This will be defined within the technical standards and within the legislation. Updates to Home Condition Reports content are unlikely to be permitted.

Who has responsibility for version control? What is it? There may be different versions of a Home Condition Report for the same property sat on different databases?
Each Home Condition Report will be stored on the Home Condition Report Register and allocated a unique reference number. Therefore there cannot be different versions of a report. It is possible that there might be several reports for the same property but regulations made under the Housing Act 2004 will require all reports produced for the seller to be included in the Home Information Pack.

Will the data be Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard (PISCES) complaint (or similar)?
There will be common technical standards which are likely to be compliant with PISCES standards. DCLG are members of PISCES.

Who will create/run/own the individual Home Condition Report registers – is this seen as being the Home Information Packs provider or Home Condition Report producer, or a third party?
Each Certification Scheme will be required to arrange for storage of the Home Condition Reports that are produced by their member Home Inspectors. The Certification Schemes must also log a copy of each Home Condition Report with the Register kept by DCLG.

Who is entitled access to the Home Condition Report and how do they access it?
Access to the Home Condition Report register and the use of information obtained from the register will be defined within the regulations.

Access to the Home Condition Report register is intended essentially for purposes connected with the efficient and smooth running of the transaction process. We intend therefore that access should be available to sellers and buyers and their professional advisers, and also to lenders and enforcement authorities.

Clarity needed regarding where to search for the data with numerous entities in place
DCLG intends to procure a portal service, which is a means of joining up the individual Certification Schemes’ Home Inspector and Home Condition Report registers.

Will Certification Schemes be allowed to charge third parties for access?
Regulations will specify any fee that may be charged for registering the Home Condition Report with the archive, inspecting the archive register or taking copies of it. The Certification Schemes will operate in a commercial environment.

How will users be verified to ensure accessing data they’re permitted to view? Are there any Data Protection implications?
The regulations will specify who may have access to the register of Home Condition Reports and for what purposes. Certification Schemes must comply with the regulations and will be required to operate within technical standards prescribed by DCLG.

Will there be a common database structure?
Common message standards will be defined within the technical standards prescribed by DCLG. Database structures within Certification Scheme registers will be at their discretion. The Home Condition Report data model will be available for guidance in draft and final form.

How will lenders get their data from various Certification Schemes?
Assuming, as we anticipate, the regulations include lenders as parties permitted to have access to Home Condition Report data, this will be defined within the message definitions and the technical standards prescribed by DCLG. The technical standards will describe a number of specialised messages that all Certification Schemes must support via an electronic request/response mechanism – key information required by lenders will be one of those messages.

What language is to be used? (i.e. is it to be a web-based browser using a widely recognized protocol such as XML/XBRL.)
We are expecting to use XML messaging to achieve the data interchange between Certification Schemes and with the central archive register.

If Government is not providing a central "databank" how many will there be and if provided by market how will we access them?
A single register of Home Condition Reports is still required and it will be kept by DCLG. Day-to-day access to Home Condition Report will be via the distributed databases held by the Certification Schemes, the number of which will be determined by the commercial marketplace.

What security and recovery/resilience will be required for the distributed databanks?
This will be defined within the technical standards prescribed by DCLG, which will be developed in conjunction with the industry.

Who will lenders be interfacing with for consumption of Home Condition Report? (e.g. central register or distributed databanks). If distributed, would they all follow exactly the same protocols?
DCLG are not expecting to provide a test system, however it may suggest tests that Certification Schemes might wish to perform.

What protocols will be used for address resolution? (e.g. postal address file, Experian) This is particularly important for flats in such places as London.
The referencing system to be used for properties will be agreed with the Technical Standards Working Group. If a number of Home Condition Reports have been completed for a property, then the final version of each Home Condition Report will be available (i.e. draft versions of Home Condition Report will not be lodged).

Will access to Home Condition Reports be available for in-house and panel valuers so able to undertake short form valuation.
Access to the Home Condition Report archive and to the Certification Scheme Home Condition Report registers will be defined within the regulations. We envisage that access will be available to mortgage lenders and those acting on their behalf.

Will we be able to view a secure version of the whole Home Condition Report or parts thereof with print functionality?
We currently have no intention to supply subsets of Home Condition Report data.

Will all parties be directed to use the same scheme?
The technical standards will apply to all Certification Schemes.

How will users be verified to ensure accessing data they’re permitted to view? Are there any data protection implications?
A user authentication framework - based on a register of approved parties that is maintained by the Home Condition Report provider - will be laid down in the technical standards with a set of supported messages. It is anticipated that Certification Schemes may want to deploy their own implementations of this framework.

All parties involved in the Home Condition Report will be expected to comply with the Data Protection Act.

What data will we need to capture for processing and how will we capture it?
The technical standards will determine the data that needs to be transmitted between organisations. It is up to an individual organisation to determine how that information is captured and processed.

We need a physical link via a dedicated line rather than over the internet (as internet can prove unreliable on a continuous basis).
It is up to each organisation how they connect, so long as it meets the technical standards.

How consistent will the adoption of the Home Condition Report transmission standard be? We do not want to be coding for supplier specific differences. Will the hub attempt to enforce the data standard? Will there be the facility for lenders to bounce back transmissions that do not meet the standard for the supplier to (manually?) correct?
All Certification Schemes will be required to comply with the technical standards set by DCLG so as to ensure consistency.

How will service down times be conveyed to the providers and consumers?
DCLG’s contract with the Home Condition Report register provider will include certain performance standards. The Certification Schemes will be required to meet standards specified by DCLG.

Access needs to be constant.
DCLG’s contract with the Home Condition Report register provider will include certain performance standards. The Certification Schemes will be required to meet standards specified by DCLG.

Who will provide technical support? Will provision of support be chargeable?
Technical support will be provided by the organisation providing the system.

It may be desirable for multiple Home Condition Report requests to be made in one call to the databank hub – will this be catered for? What constraints, if any, will be placed on size of transmitted data sets?
DCLG intend to procure a portal service to provide a single point of contact for searching the disparate Home Condition Report and Home Inspectors registers held by Certification Schemes.

The technical standards will determine the means by which multiple requests are made, and any size constraints.

We would need to know that future changes to the hub/infrastructure systems would be subject to a known change management procedure with adequate notice of change etc.
The technical standards will be owned by an authority and will be subject to the change controls required by that authority.

In order to make decisions about consumption of Home Condition Report data and whether to engage providers of related services, we need to know exactly how and where the data will flow from the infrastructure to lender system.
This will be defined within the technical standards, which will be developed in conjunction with the Technical Standards Working Group.

Will the Government have any reporting expectations from the lenders on Home Information Pack transactions?
Not in relation to Home Information Packs.