Housing quality crisis builds on 13 years of conservative deregulation | Construction industry

The article on the quality of house construction (Cracked tiles, wobbly gutters, leaning walls – why are new British houses so rubbish?, October 21) reminds me of the promised Home Information Packs (Hips) in the Queen’s Speech in 2003 and introduced by the Labor Government in 2007. The pack was to bring together all the required legal documentation, an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and a home condition report; Hundreds of building professionals have signed up for courses that would lead to a building inspector qualification.

One of then-Communities Secretary Eric Pickles’ first actions in the Coalition government in 2010 was to suspend the hip requirement, saying they were “costly and unnecessary” and that they “stifled a fragile real estate market”. Hips were finally abolished in 2012, leaving only EPC as the legal requirement. North of the border, however, assessing the condition of a property remains a condition of sale.

As Oliver Wainwright says: “Imagine buying a new car, then having to pay for the services of a professional inspector to check that it has been properly manufactured, before you dare take it on the road. » A house is the most important purchase you will make, to last at least your entire life, a cost several times that of a car that could be scrapped in 10 years.
David Jackson
Kelsall, Cheshire

The excellent and powerful article on the state of new housing in the UK is in its way a perfect microcosm of the utterly destructive and regressive effects of the Tory administration and its pact with the corrupt greed of a section of the sector companies. The paradigm, so skillfully constructed in this article, can be applied to all of social policy. First, embark on the privatization of what is essentially a public service, weaken regulations, and then relax or abandon financial controls.

This pattern was repeated in the water, railway, health and probation sectors, as well as in the housebuilding sector. This has the effect of weakening public services and shifting the resulting inevitable costs onto households and individuals, and diverting the “saved” billions to the corporate sector while undertaxing its profits and workers’ wages. leaders.

This is a total and unprecedented scandal, and the only wonder is why it is only after 13 years that the scales seem to fall from people’s eyes. Conservatives are on a mission to eviscerate our social fabric.
Neil Blackshaw
Alnwick, Northumberland