RIP to HIPs

Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps are standing outside a small estate agent in south London as cars crawl by in the smog of the morning rush hour.

Thronged by sharp-suited men and women who are beaming their approval, the new communities secretary and his housing minister are making their first public policy announcement. To their right, a model of a house which has been wrapped in red tape stands on a tressle table, looking like a strange exhibit at a village fete (pictured). You half expect them to move on to judge a display of oddly shaped vegetables at any moment.

The location, in affluent Clapham, is just a few miles from where the previous Labour administration made its first housing and regeneration announcement in 1997, with Tony Blair’s famous photocall on the deprived Aylesbury estate. The distance may be short, but it feels a
million miles away.

As the flashbulbs pop, however, there is a similarly celebratory atmosphere. Mr Pickles and Mr Shapps are here to bring an end to one of the Labour Party’s least popular legacies - the home information pack. Television personality Kirstie Allsopp, a long-standing campaigner against HIPs, is on hand to give the occasion an additional sense of glamour. Everyone is terribly excited.

‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, Grant, and you, Eric,’ Ms Allsopp says. ‘I couldn’t be more thrilled.’

‘Actually, we couldn’t be more thrilled,’ Mr Pickles beams back.

A sign of things to come

With that the trio, accompanied by Philip Bullman from the National Association of Estate Agents, prepare to rip the symbolic red tape from the model house.

‘Are you ready?’ Mr Pickles cries. ‘RIP HIPs. Let’s go.’

So what message was the government trying to send out by making this their first public pronouncement about housing?

Mr Shapps suggests the abolition of HIPs sends out a clear statement of intent.

‘Pointless red tape will go,’ he states. ‘We are doing this within a week of getting our feet under the table.’

Mr Pickles emphasises that the government had an obligation to act fast.

‘We decided to do this quickly because there was a lot of speculation [about whether HIPs would still be scrapped following formation of the coalition government].

‘We were beginning to see some evidence that people were holding off selling. The best thing was to do this straight away to avoid this speculation. Something like this is market sensitive and we felt we had to do it.’

The communities minister is at pains to state that there will be much more to emerge from the department in the coming weeks. ‘There are going to be a whole raft of announcements to come.’

He adds: ‘You will have seen we are talking about [scrapping] regional spatial strategies. Those aren’t quite as market sensitive as this was.’
Will the department have a major focus? ‘It will be all about devolution and passing down power,’ he replies. ‘We are looking at a whole raft of powers that will remove restrictions from local authorities.’

‘It’s great,’ he states in the now familiar vein of the Nick and Dave love in. ‘In a way, the priorities were self-determining. We had to decide what was very important to both sides of the coalition. We both wanted to see devolution. We both wanted to see stronger local authorities. We both wanted to see community groups given more self-determination.’

The new secretary of state is at his most confident, however, when talking about the immediate task in hand. He is in fine bombastic form, decrying an ‘entirely unnecessary piece of legislation [which] has slowed down the housing market and caused unnecessary problems’. ‘In the thick book of Labour folly, undoubtedly an entire chapter will be devoted to HIPs.’

The general atmosphere of bonhomie is broken only once when someone asks Mr Pickles to speak up over the traffic. ‘Come a little closer,’ he orders, with a flash of annoyance. On the whole though, the new communities secretary is in a cheery mood. Asked if he has hit the ground running he retorts: ‘If anyone my size can hit the ground running, then yes.’

If Mr Pickles provides the dry humour then housing minister Mr Shapps provides the counterbalance with lashings of boyish enthusiasm. He is clearly overjoyed that ‘I finally haven’t got the shadow [in front of his job title]’.

Dynamic duo

There is a curiously formal dynamic between the two, with Mr Shapps addressing his boss as ‘secretary of state’ throughout, the young private talking to his sergeant major.

Ms Allsopp emphasises that Mr Shapps should not be underestimated.

‘Grant is a man who has seen a few things in his life,’ she states. ‘He’s had a business. He’s suffered from cancer. He’s a big campaigner on homelessness. I’m very, very pleased that he is housing minister and I have enormous confidence in his ability to move things forward.’

What about Ms Allsopp herself? She worked closely with Mr Shapps when he was in opposition on the campaign against HIPs. Is there any truth in the rumour that she was an unofficial housing advisor to the then shadow government?

‘It was all fabrication,’ she laughs. ‘I was never the housing tsar!’

Would she now be keen on a larger role? Ms Allsopp says not, but that she will ‘continue to work closely with Grant’ on reducing regulation.

‘I am very happy to give more time and energy for free to anyone who is trying to make it easier for people to buy and sell houses,’ she states.

That is about giving [something] back. You can only give back in a field you know about.’

As we speak, Mr Pickles and Mr Shapps are whisked away in waiting cars. There will be tougher times to come for both. For today, they can enjoy making cuts that win them broad applause.

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