The government’s decision to scrap home information packs was a crowd-pleaser that will have resonated with the public as well as solicitors. Alive to the PR potential of the announcement, ministers staged a rather curious photo opportunity on a pavement outside a London estate agency.

TV property guru Kirstie Allsopp was on hand to give communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles a slap on the back (see Obiter).

Introduced in 2007, the packs were intended to speed up the home buying process, increasing transparency and reducing the number of sales that fell through. Though the idea may have been praiseworthy, the end result was a diluted botch. The utility of the packs proved to be negligible, with most sellers viewing them as a waste of money and most buyers seeing them as irrelevant.

Pickles said the move to abolish the packs had been taken swiftly to prevent further damage to an already fragile housing market. But HIPs are not the principal factor inhibiting recovery – a bigger issue is the willingness, or rather reluctance, of lenders to lend. Pickles’ only plea was that home sellers should go down to the local hardware store to buy paint and boost the ailing DIY industry.

Nor did the pair have anything to offer in relation to other potential changes of the home buying and selling process. That gives solicitors, and the Law Society, the chance to take the lead in this regard with their own proposals for reform.