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Oct
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Andrew McColl - Chairman - 31 October 2026
Blog
A homebuyer experiences a purchase as one journey. The professionals involved still tend to see separate files, separate systems and separate stages. A great deal of work is now going into connecting those stages, and itis moving quickly. The question for our profession is whether reliable information about the condition of the building will be built into that journey, or left waiting outside it.
Everybody is working overtime
I read a round-up published recently by PEXA, summarising several weeks of their conversations with policymakers, lenders and conveyancers about making home moves faster and more certain (their five takeaways are here). It is worth your time, not because it is the last word on anything, but because it is a fair snapshot of where the industry’s energy is currently going.
Their five themes run as follows. The real cost of a first home includes the buying process, not just the deposit. Reform has to reach completion itself, which remains one of the least modernised parts of the transaction. Smart data is only worth having if the next professional along can actually use it on a live case. Post-completion rework at HM Land Registry quietly eats a conveyancing firm’s time. And customers switching mortgage deals need to understand which of two quite different routes they are on.
Running underneath all five is an observation I agree with entirely: every organisation sees its own slice of a transaction, while the person moving house experiences the whole thing as one continuous, nerve-shredding event.
What struck me, though, was what is not in the article. Read it from top to bottom and you would struggle to work out that the thing being bought is a building. Identity, title, searches, funds, registration, mortgage decisions, all present and correct. The physical condition of the property, the roof, the drainage, the damp, the structure, the bits people actually live in and pay for, barely gets a mention.
That is not a criticism of PEXA. They are writing about their part of the market and writing about it well. It is, though, a useful illustration of something wider. Wherever a transaction is being redesigned around data, condition information has a habit of being treated as somebody else’s optional extra.
The condition report is already in the plan
Here is the part that some surveyors have not yet caught up with. Whether condition information forms part of the reformed transaction is no longer an open question. The government has already said that it will.
MHCLG published its Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap on 19 June 2026. It commits to legislating, when parliamentary time allows, for a mandatory sales pack prepared before a property is listed, with two core components: searches and a property condition report. Annex B describes it as a property condition assessment report tailored to the age and type of the property. Logbooks and packs are expected to feature in government home ownership schemes from 2027, with the legislation itself intended before the end of this Parliament.
The roadmap’s own consultation analysis found majority support for mandatory upfront information, including searches and a condition report. So the principle is settled. The specification is not.
A market valuation, notably, does not appear in the pack. That distinction matters enormously, and it needs saying early and often. A condition report helps a buyer understand what they are looking at. It is not advice on value, and it is not a comprehensive survey commissioned by a buyer for that buyer’s own purposes. Confusing the three will cause trouble for consumers and surveyors alike.
Those of us with longer memories will recognise the shape of all this. The Home Information Pack arrived in 2007 after the Home Condition Report, originally intended as a mandatory component, had been made voluntary. The reasons included insufficient real-world testing, lender readiness and uncertainty over whether enough qualified home inspectors would be available. The lesson is not that mandatory condition reports cannot work. It is that they cannot be introduced successfully unless the competence, capacity, lender acceptance and quality assurance needed to support them are built first. This time, the profession must help build that infrastructure before the legislation lands, not afterwards.
The RPSA is at the table
The RPSA is not watching this from the sidelines. We are actively involved in meetings with MHCLG and in the working groups considering how the future homebuying process should operate. We also hold a voting seat on the Construction Industry Council, which we put to use earlier this year in our formal response to the Single Construction Regulator prospectus. It has been a busy year, and the pace shows no sign of easing.
Many of these discussions take place under the Chatham House Rule. That means I cannot always report the detail, say who expressed which view, or give a running commentary on every proposal. What I can tell you is that the conversation behind the scenes is lively, and that the consequences for residential surveyors are being taken seriously.
At times, parts of the emerging system can feel as though their broad direction has already been decided. That is not a reason to disengage. The direction may be increasingly fixed, but the detail is not, and the detail is where this will be won or lost. Scope, competence, currency, reliance, liability, payment, data sharing and access for independent practices are all still live questions. Decisions taken without practising residential surveyors in the room would worry me far more than decisions we have argued over and occasionally lost.
A condition report must be worthy of reliance
Our objective is not simply to secure the condition report a place in the sales pack. It is to ensure the report is robust enough to deserve the reliance buyers will inevitably place on it.
It must not become a simplified tick-box exercise that can be completed by somebody with limited training and no recognised professional accreditation. A buyer may use this information to decide whether to proceed, whether to renegotiate, or whether to commission further specialist advice. Those judgements take more than the ability to record what is visible. They take the competence to tell the difference between a minor surface blemish and the first visible evidence of something expensive going on underneath it.
Nor should the age of a property decide whether professional judgement is needed. New homes can and do contain serious defects, including problems with construction quality, fire safety, moisture management, insulation and structural detailing. A recent completion certificate is not a substitute for a trained eye.
A weak condition report would be worse than no report at all. If it looks authoritative but misses something significant, it offers false reassurance and actively discourages the buyer from seeking the advice they actually need. The consumer ends up worse off than if the document had never existed.
The RPSA will therefore keep arguing that condition reports should be produced by appropriately qualified, independently assessed, insured and accountable professionals, working to a recognised inspection and reporting standard, and backed by real quality assurance, complaints handling and consumer redress. That does not mean turning every condition report into a Building Survey, and it certainly does not mean smuggling a valuation in through the back door. It means that what is placed in front of a consumer should be meaningful, professionally produced and safe to rely on.
That phrase, a recognised standard, deserves unpacking. Consumers would be best served by one common minimum standard for inspection and reporting within the sales pack. One standard, not several competing versions with different logos, terminology, and expectations. A consumer should not have to understand whose rulebook sits behind the document or whether the same condition rating means something different depending on who produced it.
One common standard does not mean one organisation, one report template or one method of delivery. It means that the essential scope, competence requirements, limitations, reporting outcomes, quality assurance and consumer protections should be consistent. Reports can still be tailored to the age and type of property, and providers should remain free to improve upon the minimum.
Professional and membership bodies, accreditation schemes, practising surveyors, and representatives of consumers, lenders, and insurers should develop that standard collaboratively. No single organisation, including the RPSA, should expect to determine it alone. Larger bodies bring reach and resources; smaller and specialist organisations bring valuable frontline experience. The RPSA will work constructively with any organisation approaching this in that spirit. A standard developed collectively and governed in a way that commands confidence across the sector is the one most likely to be adopted and trusted.
This is a consumer protection argument first. That it also protects competent surveyors is a consequence, not the motive.
Which means holding ourselves to the same standard
If we are going to make that argument in public, we have to be able to stand behind it.
Stronger regulation is coming to this industry and I welcome it. Professional associations and membership bodies have to be ready to play their part, rather than demanding higher standards everywhere except at home. Membership should mean more than paying a subscription and putting letters after your name. It should evidence current competence, ethical conduct, appropriate insurance, effective quality assurance and a genuine willingness to be held to account when standards are not met.
The same goes for continuing professional development. Reading a trade article or the property pages adds to a surveyor’s general awareness, and there is nothing wrong with it, but recording an hour of CPD for having done so is not evidence that anyone’s competence has been maintained or improved. We are not willing to mark our own homework. It is why the RPSA has invested heavily this year in structured CPD with clear learning outcomes, proper assessment and version-controlled content, including our course on the practical implications of the Building Safety Act 2022 for residential surveyors. If we expect the public, government and other professions to trust our members’ judgement, we need to show how that judgement is developed, tested and kept current.
That asks more of practitioners, of associations and of training providers. So it should. Professional status carries responsibilities as well as benefits.
The last mile
The industry genuinely is working overtime at the moment, in every corner of it. Lenders, conveyancers, agents, technology providers, regulators and government are all pulling at the same problem from different directions, and a good deal of real progress is being made. It is an interesting time to be doing this job.
The risk is that we build a faster, smoother and more certain route to a purchase, and the buyer still discovers the state of the building afterwards. A quicker transaction is not automatically a better-informed one.
Condition is data too. It simply happens to be the sort of data that needs somebody competent to climb into the roof space, lift an inspection chamber cover and interpret what they find. Our job, between now and the legislation, is to make certain the system being designed around us leaves a proper place for that.
RPSA members can help shape that work. Please tell us what you believe the condition report must include, where its limits should sit and what safeguards are needed to protect consumers and competent practitioners. Send your views to info@rpsa.org.uk.
Andrew McColl
