The former chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) has attacked the organisation for its “damaging and self-indulgent” opposition to the controversial seller’s pack – now dubbed the home information pack.
The NAEA this week launched its “biggest campaign ever” to prevent the government from introducing the pack.
It has hired a professional lobby group, Contact, to put pressure on parliament and ministers, and has asked members to send letters to clients to show them how much the packs will cost.
But in a letter to Estates Gazette this week, former NAEA chief executive Hugh Dunsmore-Hardy, who left in November last year, said: “The NAEA has embarked on a
self-indulgent course in accusing the government of poorly researching its proposals to improve the home buying and selling process.”
Citing a raft of consultation papers and reports that support the government’s policy, Dunsmore-Hardy added that the NAEA was “likely to be accused of cynically playing the consumer interest card”.
He said the campaign would make the organisation appear “self-protectionist, politically motivated or as Luddites”.
But NAEA president Julie Westby defended the campaign, saying: “I look like a militant leader because of this campaign, but I’m really not at all.”
She added: “I’m simply doing what the council and the members say we should do. The members have been against the pack for a long time, but for a while the NAEA sat back and waited.
“The reason our official position has swung so far from where it was before is that the government hasn’t really listened to our concerns.
“Even though agents will no longer face criminal sanctions, the government has not shown that it has considered the impact this policy will have.”
In Dunsmore-Hardy’s time the NAEA was in favour of the seller’s pack, as long as the government dropped proposals to enforce them using criminal sanctions, and subsequently it claimed it was “neutral”.
But opposition from members and groups such as SPLINTA caused Dunsmore-Hardy’s resignation in November and a reversal of the position.
Dunsmore-Hardy now works for Surveyors and Valuers Accreditation, a quango responsible for promoting the pack.
References: EGi News 28/04/03
