The housing minister, Yvette Cooper, has announced in a statement that £4m will be invested in trialling Home Information Packs (HIPs), in various areas across the UK, according to the Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP)

Mike Ockenden of AHIPP said: “We are delighted that the government wants to get involved in our roll-out and with the extra funding pledged we will work with DCLG to put those funds to their best use.

“We know that many estate agents are supportive of HIPs and we will be offering the home condition report as an option in our roll-out. It is the Association’s intention to press government to make HCRs mandatory once their success has been proved.

“We firmly believe that HIPs will prove to be of enormous benefit to both buyers and sellers and now that government has reaffirmed its total support for Hips we need to get on with the roll-out and inform the public about the process.”

But the announcement has provoked somewhat of a negative response within some parts of the property industry.

Nick Salmon, head of the anti-pack campaign, SPLINTA, said: "We await full details of just how this huge sum of tax-payer money is going to be spent but we can immediately question why the government is ploughing our money into trials that are being run by a body that represents companies seeking to make vast profits from HIPs. There must be robust and independent scrutiny of these so-called trials to ensure objectivity."

Peter Bolton King chief executive of the NAEA said: “The Association has always said that it was vital that any trials thoroughly test not only the systems but whether our concerns about the effect on the market are justified.

“We have not been told how these trails are to be conducted and have doubts as to their effectiveness in a voluntary scenario.”

Yvette Cooper has pledged the £4m of funding to support six area trials for the packs in Bath, Newcastle, Southampton, Northampton, Huddersfield and Cambridge in November 2006.