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After days of speculation, the Conservative-Lib Dem Government has said that home sellers will no longer need to provide home information packs (Hips). But due to EU law an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) will still be required.

The move should cut around £250 off selling the average home. A full Hip costs around £350, while a standalone EPC can be sourced for £100.

Housing minister Grant Shapps said: 'Today the new Government is ensuring that home information packs are history. This is a great example of how we are determined to get straight down to work and cut pointless red tape which is strangling the market. 'By suspending home information packs today, it means that home sellers will be able to get on with marketing their home without having to shell out hundreds of pounds upfront. 'We are committed to greener housing so from now on all that will be required will be a simple energy performance certificate.'

One of the main criticisms levelled at Hips is that the cost put homeowners off speculatively putting their properties on the market, further reducing the number of homes for sale. The decision to axe Hips comes amid claims that they were part of a Labour plot to raise council tax.

Papers released by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles show ministers intended to use the information to complete a database on 22m homes held by the Valuation Office Agency. It updates the council tax banding of properties and has been preparing for a revaluation of homes in England that would generate bigger council tax bills for anyone whose home has risen in value over the past 20 years.

The move to axe Hips immediately comes amid increasing calls for the property market not to be left in limbo while awaiting an announcement on them.

While removing the often ignored packs will be popular with sellers and is unlikely to have much effect on buyers, it will deliver a blow to the thousands who trained to supply the packs.

David Smith, senior partner at property consultancy Carter Jonas, said: 'In 1997, Tony Blair announced that he was going to remove the uncertainty in the house buying process and introduced the Home Information Pack. It's now 13 years on and the same level of uncertainty exists so Hips, very clearly, were not the answer. 'The estate agency process still needs to be radically overhauled and bringing it in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland, where an offer is more binding, would be no bad thing. 'We need to remove the extreme uncertainty and emotional drain that surrounds house buying and selling. It needs to be simpler, more transparent and considerably less stressful.'

The brief (and troubled) history of Hips

Improving the home buying and selling process was a Labour manifesto pledge in 1997 and Hips were designed to do this. Initially, they would have included a mini-survey in the form of a home condition report, but the cost of doing this, combined with the failure to ensure that mortgage lenders would accept it as a survey/valuation, left the idea holed below the water line.

The home condition report was dropped and then the packs launch for all homes due on June 1, 2007, was put back to a phased introduction beginning with four-bedroom homes on August 1, 2007. Hips include a set of documents showing terms of sale, evidence of title and the energy certificate among others. The latter document was considered the most important in terms of the law, due to its mandatory status under EU law.

The remaining documents, while useful, were often surplus to requirement as buyers' solicitors insist on carrying out these searches themselves, due to their liability if things go wrong. In practice, house hunters paid little attention to the documents unless they suspected a leasehold/land problem; meanwhile the energy assessment is relatively meaningless too much of Britain's older housing stock.

Hips cost from £250 - typically about £350 for an average house - and were purchased from specialist providers or through estate agents.

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