New housing minister Margaret Beckett has been right to stand by her conviction that HIPs should not be suspended, according to a leading Wirral property lawyer.

Pressure was mounting on Ms Beckett to shelve the legislation after she admitted that the initiative was still far from perfect.

Home Information Packs, which contain relevant legal searches and deeds together with an energy performance certificate, became mandatory for every property entering the market from December 14th last year.

Daniel Stear, a residential conveyancing specialist at Kirwans Solicitors, said that the process was too far gone to abandon and that the housing minister had made the right decision.

“With the property market continuing to show signs of distress, a U-turn on this scale would be the hallmark of disarray within Government,” he said.

“With the dramatic cut in interest rate being announced by the Bank of England, there is optimism within certain parts of the property market, particularly if the rate cut is passed on to some degree by lenders, and this needs to be built upon.”

Mr Stear added that where HIPs had been properly compiled, they had effectively reduced conveyancing times to a matter of weeks rather than months, and that focus should now fall on HIPs that were not being compiled correctly.

He said: “HIPs have always had the potential to benefit the conveyancing process, it is just that problems have arisen due to a lack of proper regulation with regard to their implementation.”

Addressing the Commons Local Government Committee, Margaret Beckett said that she ‘fully accepted that HIPs are not the perfect vehicle we might wish for’ but that ‘given all the abuse that HIPs suffered, had been relatively successful’.

Mr Stear commented: “In terms of timing, the full roll-out of HIPs last December was unfortunate. The first true signs of property boom’s end were becoming apparent, and the introduction of essentially an unknown quantity to the market was inevitably going to cause apprehension.”