ABSTRACT
It could be said that the Home Condition Report is a ‘one size fits all’ form of report in a prescribed standard format to be used for any type, size or age of dwelling. This is a generalisation which is not strictly true. Being electronically produced and stored, while some sections of the report are required to be set out in a brief informative prescribed manner, using mandatory text for which a range of options is provided, other sections contain boxes which expand to accommodate what may need to be said about the construction and condition of the dwelling. Some might liken this to a variant of Parkinson’s Law, viz, ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’ which can present the same danger to the unduly verbose inspector. In effect the boxes can get bigger for the wrong reason. On the other hand, a well-presented report on a large house with many complicated interconnecting defects will inevitably be long while, correspondingly, a report on a small house of simple construction with not much wrong can be short.
