After a further debate the House of Lords voted by 186 to 160 to call on the government to revoke Home Information Packs (HIPs).

Peter Bolton King, chief executive at the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), said: “Yet again the House of Lords has expressed considerable concern over a number of aspects relating to Home Information Packs (HIPs), demonstrating just how flawed this piece of legislation is.

“While the government can of course ignore this motion, as it was not a fatal bill, this nevertheless sends another clear message. The NAEA has consistently expressed the view - supported by their Lordships - that HIPs alone is not the way to improve the buying and selling process.

“Even at this late stage, with the phased introduction of HIPs due to start on the 1 st August, we yet again call on the government to proceed with the energy performance certificate – which we are in full support of – and to scrap the remainder of this ill-thought out pack.

“Meanwhile, we remain genuinely concerned about whether there will be sufficient domestic energy assessors in the correct geographical locations by the 1st August. We are also alarmed by reports that some of the accredited assessors may not in fact want to take up this new job, and no research appears to have been done to check whether this is correct.”