THE government intends to make it a civil offence to put a house on the market without a Home Information Pack (previously called Sellers pack) being prepared first.

In essence - if you are a seller, you will need to prepare a Home Information Pack by buying a survey for your home, asking your solicitor to prepare a contract, obtaining searches, getting together all guarantees on the property etc., at an average cost of about £800, before you will be allowed, by law, to place your home on the market.

Provided a surveyor is available and your solicitor efficient, the pack may be ready in three weeks; if you have any problems it could be anything up to ten weeks before your agent is permitted to start marketing your home. If an agent even whispers that your home may be on the market soon to a buyer, before your pack is purchased by you, the agent could be banned from estate agency by The Office of Fair Trading. Packs will also have to be renewed (average cost £500) every three months if your property remains unsold.

Once your home is on the market with the pack that you have paid for yourself, the new law will allow anyone to demand to read it; this means your survey, your contract, your preliminary enquiries - everything. It will tell them a lot of private information about you, but you cannot demand any information about your buyer even when negotiating.

The Home Information Pack is an expensive irrelevance and worse, likely to disadvantage you as a buyer because you offer for a property would unlikely to be considered until you had bought a pack for your own - remember the ten week delay before you can start marketing.

There is a chance this ridiculous proposed legislation could be stopped at the committee stage if enough people express concern - write to your MP with your objections before it is too late.

More information about the Housing Information Pack can be found at www.odpm.co.uk (see Housing Bill) and www.estateagencynews.co.uk

KEITH BERRY, Nursery Road, Malvern.