HI Students In Sunday Telegraph Article

The Sunday Telegraph approached and interviewed the company's Chief Executive, Stephen Callaghan last week to find out his opinion about the new Home Condition Report and to discover the reaction of our students currently undertaking the Diploma in Home Inspection.

Stephen Callaghan, in commenting on the Sunday Telegraph article said: "We are absolutely delighted to have begun to set the record straight so far as new entrant home inspectors are concerned. We involved Sally Jackson and Paul Taliotis, two of the 500 students going through our new entrant flexible learning course, and the Telegraph decided to speak in detail to Paul.

Sally, currently a nurse and Paul, a carpenter, are both studying hard to complete their Diploma and will soon be entering the industry as qualified home inspectors. They are very self-determined people and have set their sights very clearly on the rewards to be made from this new career. Their focus, dedication and commitment are typical of all of the new entrants we have relationships with. We hope that the general public will now begin to gain an appreciation of the role of home inspectors as an integral part of the Home Information Pack, and also how important people like Paul and Sally will be to the future surveying profession. Unfortunately, comparisons are bound to be drawn with surveyors, which is not very helpful, particularly as surveyors had a lot of bad publicity at the end of the 1990's. Surveyors are skilled people, but their qualifications are highly academic and do not have to show their abilities at practicing in the residential sector. At long last, the consumer will be getting what has been needed for decades; a property inspection professional who does have to demonstrate they are competent to do the job they were trained to do. Those professionals will be known as Licensed Home Inspectors"

As the Telegraph article contained a number of fundamental journalistic inaccuracies we consider it important that we correct them on the following points:

* Our New Entrant Flexible Learning Course is reported to cost £8,500 - this should be £7,600 inc VAT;

* The average fee per HCR, as quoted by the Government and based on their experiences from the Bristol Pilot is likely to be around £350. However, the eventual figure will be determined by simple supply and demand economics;

* The RICS Chartered surveyor with 20+years of experience said he had dropped the idea of doing HCRs when his training as an experienced practitioner was getting close to £6,000 - In fact, Practical Training and Assessment for an Experienced Practitioner typically costs circa £2,250;

* Andrew Gooding of RICS is contradicting the Government's own statistics on Home Inspectors in training. He says only 500 non-RICS Home Inspectors will be ready by the Go-Live date. Allowing for our New Entrants together with those coming through other schemes who started by June 06, there will be at least 1000 finishers by June 2007. When we add the NAEA candidates, CEM candidates and all the intermediate non-RICS candidates the figure will be nearer 2,000 non-RICS coming through at that date;

* The total cost of required HCR training plus the cost of required RDSAP training on top of the assessment fee for RICS members amounts to approximately £2,250 for RICS surveyors;

* It is misleading to compare Chartered Surveyors and Home Inspectors in their relative roles as "Nurses" and "Doctors". This analogy is incorrect as all Home Inspectors are required to do the same level of inspection and report, (the Home Condition Report). Some surveyors, of course, may choose to do other types of survey work;

* The article says it takes 7 years to become MRICS whereas it actually takes 5 yrs;

* The article highlights the Tory view on HIPs. It should be remembered that the requirement for HIPs is specified by Section 5 of the Housing Act 2004. It is therefore a statutory requirement. Additionally, the Government is also required to comply with the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The "Go-Live" date for mandatory implementation of HIPs less than 11 months away and a General Election is not scheduled to take place before such date;

Read the whole article on the Telegraph website.