A CONSERVATIVE shadow cabinet member showed his commitment to reducing bureaucracy today by quite literally cutting some red tape.

Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps wrapped a Hendon house in red ribbon in protest against Home Improvement Packs (HIPs), promising that under a Conservatives government they would be scrapped.

Brought in two years ago, the packs were intended to make house sales more transparent by presenting potential buyers with useful information about the property, including an energy performance certificate and details about any recent planning permission.

　

But they can cost sellers more then £400 and have been criticised for slowing down property transactions.

Mr Shapps, MP for Welwyn Hatfield, said the packs, which he estimated cost £750,000 per day, are an unnecessary expense.

"Home owners deserve a break," he said.

"We want to cut homeowners free. It is needless bureaucratic red tape."

Mr Shapps said he hoped his party would be in power after the next election, adding: "Then people will just be able to go back to selling their home without forking out lots of money."

Locksmith David Wright, 55, whose house in Meadow Drive was wrapped in ribbon for the event, said HIPs did not tell them anything a survey wouldn't have.

He and his wife Helen, 40, are selling the house and moving to Bedfordshire, but they said the scheme had been a waste of £300 for them and the people he was buying from.

HIPs were supposed to be a way of speeding up the sales process, and managing director of Kingsleys Estates in Golders Green, Murray Lee, said the basic principle behind them was not a bad one.

However he said they could delay a house going on the market for up to ten days, whereas it used to take just 48 hours, and that most customers don't even look at them.

"They are basically a useless document of no value to anybody at all," he said.