This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'Zero data loss of EPC information'.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HOME CONDITION REPORT REGISTER & ASSOCIATED SERVICES 
(ODPM Procurement Ref: 06043) 
 
SERVICES REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Contents 
 
1 
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................... 4 
1.1 
BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................................. 4 
1.2 
PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT........................................................................................................................... 4 
1.3 
ORGANISATIONAL VIEW................................................................................................................................... 5 
2 
REQUIREMENTS SUMMARY............................................................................................................................ 7 
2.1 
FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS .......................................................................................................................... 7 
2.2 
OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS ........................................................................................................................ 7 
2.3 
ASPIRATIONAL REQUIREMENTS ....................................................................................................................... 8 
2.4 
GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS .................................................................................................................................. 8 
2.4.1 
Transaction Volumes .................................................................................................................................. 9 
3 
FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS .................................................................................................................... 11 
3.1 
HOME CONDITION REPORT REGISTRATION .................................................................................................... 11 
3.1.1 
Context & Overview.................................................................................................................................. 11 
3.1.2 
Service Operational Requirements ........................................................................................................... 12 
3.1.3 
Request Interface Definition ..................................................................................................................... 12 
3.1.4 
Response Interface Definition................................................................................................................... 13 
3.1.5 
Functional Description ............................................................................................................................. 13 
3.1.6 
Processing the Registration Queue........................................................................................................... 14 
3.2 
CHANGE HOME CONDITION REPORT STATUS................................................................................................. 15 
3.2.1 
Context & Overview.................................................................................................................................. 15 
3.2.2 
Service Operational Requirements ........................................................................................................... 16 
3.2.3 
Request Interface Definition ..................................................................................................................... 16 
3.2.4 
Response Interface Definition................................................................................................................... 17 
3.2.5 
Functional Description ............................................................................................................................. 17 
3.3 
HOME CONDITION REPORT INDEX & PORTAL SERVICES ................................................................................ 19 
3.3.1 
Context & Overview.................................................................................................................................. 19 
3.3.2 
Service Operational Requirements ........................................................................................................... 20 
3.3.3 
Request Interface Definition ..................................................................................................................... 21 
3.3.4 
Response Interface Definition................................................................................................................... 22 
3.3.5 
Functional Description ............................................................................................................................. 23 
3.4 
SEARCH HOME INSPECTOR REGISTER INDEX.................................................................................................. 24 
3.4.1 
Context & Overview.................................................................................................................................. 24 
3.4.2 
Service Operational Requirements ........................................................................................................... 25 
3.4.3 
Request Interface Definition ..................................................................................................................... 25 
3.4.4 
Response Interface Definition................................................................................................................... 27 
3.4.5 
Functional Description ............................................................................................................................. 27 
3.4.6 
Other details ............................................................................................................................................. 28 
3.5 
PROPERTY & ADDRESSING DATABASE........................................................................................................... 28 
3.5.1 
Context & Overview.................................................................................................................................. 28 
3.5.2 
Functional Description ............................................................................................................................. 29 
3.5.3 
Service Operational Requirements ........................................................................................................... 30 
4 
OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS ................................................................................................................. 31 
4.1 
USER AUTHENTICATION & AUTHORISATION.................................................................................................. 31 
4.2 
BACKUP & RECOVERY ................................................................................................................................... 32 
4.3 
DATA ARCHIVING & RETENTION ................................................................................................................... 32 
4.4 
RESILIENCY & AVAILABILITY ........................................................................................................................ 33 
4.5 
FLEXIBILITY & EXTENSIBILITY ...................................................................................................................... 33 
4.6 
DISASTER RECOVERY..................................................................................................................................... 34 
5 
OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES ............................................................................................................................ 35 
5.1 
CHANGE MANAGEMENT................................................................................................................................. 35 
5.2 
IT GOVERNANCE ............................................................................................................................................ 35 
 
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6 
POTENTIAL FUTURE REQUIREMENTS ...................................................................................................... 36 
6.1 
DATA HANDOVER .......................................................................................................................................... 36 
6.2 
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & DATA-MINING.................................................................................................... 36 
6.3 
ENERGY PERFORMANCE CERTIFICATE ........................................................................................................... 37 
APPENDIX A. 
WHAT IS A PORTAL SERVICE? ............................................................................................. 38 
APPENDIX B. 
DATA VALIDATION................................................................................................................... 41 
APPENDIX C. 
ERROR HANDLING.................................................................................................................... 42 
APPENDIX D. 
GLOSSARY & ACRONYMS ...................................................................................................... 45 
APPENDIX E. 
RELATED DOCUMENTS........................................................................................................... 47 
 
 
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1  INTRODUCTION 
1.1  BACKGROUND 
From 1 June 2007, sellers of marketed residential property in England and Wales or their agents 
will be required to prepare, or arrange through an agent the preparation of, a Home Information 
Pack (HIP).  This pack will comprise a number of documents including a Home Condition Report 
(HCR1) prepared by Home Inspectors who must be a member of a Certification Scheme and will 
be responsible for producing Home Condition Reports.  
The Home Information Pack will be made available to prospective buyers and all other interested 
parties subject to access rights.  This only applies to sales of residential properties in England and 
Wales and the Home Condition Report is not required for new homes and non-domestic properties. 
The Housing Act 2004 requires that where a Certification Schemes applies, the Secretary of State 
must be satisfied that appropriate provision exists for:  
• 
Requiring Home Condition Reports to be entered on a register.  This register may be 
owned by, or on behalf of, the Secretary of State.; and 
• 
The keeping of a public register of the members of the scheme.   
The Home Condition Report Register is necessary to ensure the authenticity of the Home 
Condition Report, so that it can and will be trusted by those entitled to rely on it, i.e. buyers and 
lenders as well as the seller who procures it.  In particular the Home Condition Report Register 
ensures that: 
• 
The Home Condition Report can be produced only by a registered Home Inspector. 
• 
Home Condition Reports are insured.  
• 
Consumers and others can check that the copy of a Home Condition Report provided to 
them is a true copy of the original. 
• 
Mortgage Lenders can rely on the Home Condition Report as it will come from a trusted 
source so that the Home Condition Report may be used to underpin valuations in many 
cases.  
• 
The Certification Schemes can monitor the work of their members. 
1.2  PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT 
This document contains details of the business requirements that need to be met by the Home 
Condition Report Register Operator with functional specifications for all the key services and 
success criteria for achieving the critical non-functional requirements. 
The Business Requirements cover the full set of activities and processes that a business needs to 
carry out in order to achieve its business aims – they are a definition of what needs to be achieved 
not how it is achieved.  
Business Requirements can be further categorised in a number of different ways depending on the 
nature of the business being described. So, because the Home Condition Report Register is 
primarily a data storage environment, the Home Condition Report Register and Associated 
Consolidation Services (collectively called the Home Condition Report Register) Business 
Requirements has been divided into the following key sections: 
                                            
1  
HCR is the generally used abbreviation for a Home Condition Report but for the purpose of clarity acronyms are 
not used within this document. 
 
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Requirements Summary –summarises the business requirements, including the aspirational 
requirements, and any assumptions and assertions that are relevant to understanding or 
interpreting the requirements. 
Functional Requirements –contains functional descriptions of the main business processes that 
the Home Condition Report Register Operator is expected to operate on behalf of the 
ODPM. Note that these functional descriptions are not formal specifications. 
Operational Requirements – outlines the general policies and data management requirements 
that the Home Condition Report Register Operator is expected to adhere to. 
Other Responsibilities describes the administrative and governance functions that the Home 
Condition Report Register Operator will carry out on behalf of the ODPM.  
Future Requirements – although not part of the initial procurement this section describes a 
number of known requirements that may potentially have to be supported during the life of 
the contract. Consequently it is expected that any proposed solution should, wherever 
possible, take these requirements into consideration in order to ensure that the cost and 
impact of any changes are minimised. 
The Appendices at the end of the document contain background detail that may be of interest to 
the reader. 
1.3  ORGANISATIONAL VIEW 
Numerous organisations will be involved, either directly or indirectly, in providing the key 
functionality described required for the Home Information Pack.  Below is a pictorial representation 
of the organisation level view: 
 
Public Appointments
Regulations/ Procurement
ANDPB
ODPM
HCR Register Operator
Approval
ODPM
ODPM
Certification Scheme
 
 
 
The following four bodies make up the Home Condition Report and Home Inspector Registration 
and retrieval functions: 
 
Advisory Group 
The role of this body would solely be to provide independent expert advice to ODPM and it has no 
executive powers.  Its purpose would be to advise ODPM on the ongoing suitability of the 
Standards, recommending changes where necessary, and also advising on issues relating to 
performance of Certification Schemes. 
ODPM 
 
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The Secretary of State will approve Certification Scheme(s) against the Criteria and Standards 
documentation.  The Standards governing Home Inspectors, Certification Schemes and Home 
Condition Reports will be published owned and maintained by ODPM.   
Certification Scheme(s) 
Certification Schemes will be required to comply with all the conditions attached to their Approval, 
including the Criteria and the Standards. 
Certification Schemes will be required to carry out certain primary functions in accordance with the 
Standards which define minimum acceptable levels of operation, performance data and associated 
quality management that is required by ODPM together with those areas of required co-operation 
with other Certification Schemes. 
Home Condition Report Register Operator 
The Home Condition Report Register Operator will be procured by ODPM.  It will be responsible 
for providing a central ‘archive’ Home Condition Report Register and the provision of a portal for 
locating the Home Inspector and Home Condition Report information from the various Certification 
Scheme(s) registers. 
 
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2  REQUIREMENTS SUMMARY 
This section summarises the business requirements, including the aspirational requirements, and 
any assumptions and assertions that are relevant to understanding or interpreting the 
requirements. 
2.1  FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS 
This section is a summary of the key services and metrics described in Section 3. 
Section  Service 
Availability 
Responsive 
Transaction 
Volumes (see 
Section 2.4.1) 
3.1 
Home Condition Report Registration 
Very High 
< 2 minutes 
1,600,000 to 
(99.99%) 
on-line  / 12 
1,800,000 per 
hours off-line 
annum 
3.2 
Change Home Condition Report Status 
Low 
< 12 hours 
~100,000 per 
annum 
3.3 
Home Condition Report Index & Portal 
Very High 
< 1 minute 
11,200,000 to 
(99.99%) 
18,000,000 
per annum 
3.4 
Search Home Inspector Register Index 
Very High 
< 1 minute 
4,800,000 to 
(99.99%) 
9,000,000 per 
annum 
3.5 
Property & Addressing Database 
Very High 
< 1 minute 
4,800,000 to 
(99.99%) 
9,000,000 per 
annum 
In addition there may be a number of secondary services required to support the primary services 
that are implementation specific so out of scope of this document. These secondary services would 
be expected to meet the operational requirements of the primary services. 
2.2  OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS 
This section is a summary of the key requirements described in Section 4. 
Section  Requirement Outline 
4.1 
It is incumbent on the Home Condition Report Register Operator to ensure that the internal integrity 
of the Home Condition Report is maintained over time and is protected from unauthyorised 
tampering. 
4.2 
It is essential that all Home Condition Report in the HCR register are regularly backed-up. 
4.2 
The Home Condition Report Register operates as a no-loss data environment. 
4.3 
The Home Condition Report is to be retained as a working document for 15 years. 
4.4 
The overall availability requirements for the Home Condition Report Register and related services 
must meet the operational requirements of the significant user groups. 
4.5 
A critical business driver is being able to extend the Home Condition Report without incurring 
significant impact or unnecessary changes. 
4.6 
It is the responsibility of the Home Condition Report Register Operator to develop procedures for 
disaster recovery that minimises the impact of any major system outage. 
 
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2.3  ASPIRATIONAL REQUIREMENTS 
This section covers the aspirational requirements for the Home Condition Report Register. These 
are the requirements that either cannot be measured or for which success is a subjective measure.  
For example “The consumer should trust the Home Condition Report…” is an Aspirational 
Requirement because it cannot be pre-defined in absolute terms - the degree of trust is dependent 
on who is being asked the question and how they personally feel about the Home Information Pack 
in general. 
Although no absolute solutions can be provided for these requirements it is expected that any 
tender should reflect an understanding of the purpose of the Home Condition Report and 
demonstrate wherever appropriate how any proposed solutions will help in achieving these 
aspirational requirements. 
Ref 
Requirement Outline 
AR01 
The consumer should trust the Home Condition Report and have confidence in its integrity 
& authenticity. 
The Home Condition Report Register will be the Database of Record for all Home 
Condition Reports and in the event of dispute provides the definitive statement regarding 
the actual Home Condition Report that was produced and lodged along with the underlying 
data that was used to produce that Home Condition Report.  
As such it is essential to build consumer confidence in the integrity of the Home Condition 
Report Register, the authenticity of the reports stored in it and the services it provides. 
AR02 
Provision should be made to ensure that the solution can be continually improved  
AR03 
Home Condition Report Register facilities should be a tool for upholding the Act and 
policing the quality of the Home Inspectors work. 
AR04 
Home Condition Report Register must assist in minimising fraud and abuse. 
AR05 
The process of using the Home Condition Report Register should not unnecessarily delay 
or obstruct a property sale. 
AR06 
The Home Condition Report Register should be capable of storing Energy Proficiency 
Certificate  
 
2.4   GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS  
There are a number of working assumptions made throughout this document, which are 
summarised here: 
• 
The loading of new Home Condition Reports is relatively predictable. Once “Registered” a 
Home Condition Report cannot be modified, so there are no “modify” transactions. Incorrect 
or invalid reports are “cancelled” (see “Change Home Condition Report Status”) and, if 
appropriate, a corrected report is separately registered. 
• 
The transaction volume may be affected by the transition to a new home buying process in 
the early period of operation. Similarly the fluctuations in the housing market may affect 
volumes. 
• 
The Energy Performance Certificates (a defined sub-set of the Home Condition Report 
data) for other than marketed non-commercial properties is out of scope. 
 
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• 
The status of a Home Condition Report, once lodged, can only be altered with an approval 
from the Certification Scheme . Please note that it is alteration of the status of the Home 
Condition Report, not changes to the Home Condition Report data. 
• 
Any Multi-Language capability is restricted to the English and Welsh languages and only 
applies to textual strings2. There is no requirement to render numbers etc. with different 
formatting patterns depending on the viewer. For Properties in England the Home Condition 
Report is always in English but in Wales it may be in English or Welsh at the discretion of 
the Seller.  
• 
It is not assumed that any commercial database software is used to provide the solution to 
the requirements but it is assumed that the data storage solution will be a managed 
environment with pre-defined processes for inserting data into that managed environment. 
It is equally assumed that these processes can, and indeed will, fail at some inconvenient 
point in time. 
• 
No charge will be made for use of the portal.  
• 
A charge will be agreed with OFDPM for the lodgement of a Home Condition Report. This 
charge will be a included in legislation. 
• 
A newly certified Home Inspector would not be performing home inspections on the day that 
they become certified because the details of their certification would be in the post (or 
whatever delivery mechanism is used to courier it to them). Therefore changes to any 
Home Inspector Register only need to be accurate up to the previous day. 
The rationale for each of these assumptions are discussed at the point that it is relevant. 
2.4.1  Transaction Volumes 
These Transaction Volumes are indicative of expected activity and are provided to assist 
prospective contractors in their calculations.. The key Transaction Volumes are: 
• 
Home Condition Reports per annum: This is dependent on the housing market.  Between 
1,600,000 and 1,800,000 Properties are likely to be marketed each year and a Home 
Condition Report will be required for each of these that is not a new home or any other type 
of home that is exempt from a Home Condition Report under regulations. 
• 
Seasonal and unexpected fluctuations: Some seasonal fluctuations will have an impact 
on the profile of properties being sold, and therefore on the number of Home Condition 
Reports being lodged over any given period. The seasonal variation can vary up to 40% 
above the annual average per month.  
• 
The number of active Home Inspectors is estimated at 5,000 to 7,500 though the number of 
registered Home Inspectors will be greater than this due to market churn (retirements, new 
qualifiers etc.) over time in the range 7,500 to 10,500.  
• 
The average daily Home Inspections performed by each Home Inspector is estimated as 
between 1.5 and 2 per day.  
• 
The average size of each Home Condition Report PDF will be between 50K and 100K. 
• 
The average size of the Home Condition Report XML data will be between 200K and 250K 
• 
Number of Properties within England & Wales: 30,000,000. 
                                            
2  
“Textual Strings” are string variables that carry free-form descriptive text such as “Comments” and Enumerated 
Value Meanings. String Properties that carry enumerated values or number values are Strings but not Textual 
Strings – it’s a significant distinction. 
 
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• 
Registered Users: 10,000 to 15,000 including Home Inspectors, Mortgage Lenders, Home 
Condition Report Supplier & Home Condition Report Registrars aggregated over the 15 
year life the Home Condition Report – see User Authentication and Authorisation for 
descriptions of the Registered Users. 
• 
There will be approximately 7 to 10 accesses per Home Condition Report during the course 
of its life from a cross-section of the functional roles: Home Information Pack Provider, 
Home Condition Report Supplier, Home Inspector, Seller, Buyer (more than one per Home 
Condition Report), Mortgage Lender (one per Buyer), Estate Agent, Certification Scheme 
for Quality Assurance and Monitoring purposes.  
 
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3  FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS  
This section contains functional requirements (not specifications) of the main business services 
that the Home Condition Report Register Operator is expected to provide on behalf of the ODPM.  
This section outlines the principle responsibilities of the Home Condition Report Register Operator 
and the services it provides to the marketplace.  
For each key service the service definition is organised into the following sections: 
• 
A high-level overview of the supported process, putting the service in its operational 
context.  
• 
An explanation of any significant Operational Requirements that the service must meet. 
• 
Diagrammatic description of the Request / Response Interface Definitions that are to be 
implemented.  
ODPM provides the XML Schema Definition files defining the actual messages themselves 
but the physical implementation of the messages – e.g. the Web Service definition 
Language (WSDL) file and its local port mapping – is the responsibility of the service 
provider to define. 
• 
A Functional Description providing a business definition of what operation the service needs 
to carry out. Unless absolutely necessary no definition of how the service is to be 
implemented is provided. 
• 
List of service specific error messages that may be raised by the service in addition to the 
list of generic errors that may be raised from data validation etc. 
Generic functionality such as Data Validation and Error Handling (see Appendices for definition) 
are described in the appropriate appendices and only service-specific functionality is mentioned 
against each service. It should be assumed that the generic functionality requirements apply to all 
service definitions whether explicitly mentioned or not. 
3.1  HOME CONDITION REPORT REGISTRATION 
3.1.1  Context & Overview 
The Home Condition Report Registration process is one of the core service required in the 
production of a Home Condition Report. During the production of a Home Condition Report three 
core operations take place: 
1. 
Validate & Format Home Condition Report – this includes allocating the Home Condition 
Report Reference Number (RRN) and producing the Home Condition Report PDF to be 
lodged. 
2. 
Store Home Condition Report in the Local Home Condition Report Register managed by the 
Home Condition Report Registrar as the industry facing repository for the Home Condition 
Report for subsequent consumer retrieval. 
3. 
After provisional registering locally, the Home Condition Report Registrar sends the Home 
Condition Report – both raw XML data and PDF – to the Home Condition Report Register 
for central lodging. A confirmation message will be returned to notify of successful or 
unsuccessful lodging.  
The overall high-level process looks like this: 
 
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RAW02000 - HCR Registration
lier
02005:
02045:
upp
02035:
Register HCR
Register HCR
Registration failed
 S
Request
Response
R
C
H
Yes
No
MS: HCR_Request
r
Register_HCR_Successful
MS: Register_HCR_Failure
tra
02025:
egis
Validate & Format
Provisionally
02050:
02030:
02040:
Yes
No
HCR
Register HCR
Activate Local
Successful?
Undo Local
 R
locally
HCR
MS:
Register_HCR
ster
gi
ator
03000:
 Re
er
Lodge HCR in
MS: HCR_Lodge_Results
R
HCR Register
Op
HC
 
 
Within this overall process the Home Condition Report Register Operator is responsible for 
providing the service for managing the lodgement of the Home Condition Report in the central 
Home Condition Report Register and returning an appropriate Success / Failure Response. 
3.1.2  Service Operational Requirements 
The Home Condition Report Registration process is a mission critical process because if a Home 
Condition Report cannot be registered in the Home Condition Report Register then it is not a valid 
Home Condition Report and the Home Inspector (or Home Condition Report Supplier) cannot give 
the report to the Seller for inclusion in a Home Information Pack.  
The Home Condition Report Registration process is therefore a mission-critical single point of 
failure that needs to be both highly available and highly resistant to failure. 
The service will need to demonstrate 99.99% availability for the main operational window as 
defined in Resiliency & Availability (Section 4.4)
In addition to avoiding excessive waiting by the user the service is expected to respond to the user 
within 2 minutes if invoked during the operational window or before start of business the next day if 
invoked outside the operational window e.g. as an overnight batch process. This is to allow for 
overnight maintenance outages for housekeeping tasks such as upgrades. 
In this respect it is expected that if a valid Home Condition Report is successfully delivered to the 
Home Condition Report Registration service then, providing the message content passes data 
validation, it is the service provider’s responsibility to ensure that the Home Condition Report is 
registered. That is, an internal technical problem – such as a database outage – is not sufficient 
reason for failing to register a Home Condition Report3
3.1.3  Request Interface Definition  
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportCreateRequest_1.xsd 
                                            
3  
According to the business processes registration is said to have occurred if the Home Condition Report Register 
has received the report and there is nothing wrong with it and an appropriate response has been returned to the 
client. In other words the Home Condition Report Register is the entire operating environment not just the 
database containing the data. 
 
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3.1.4  Response Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportCreateResponse_1.xsd 
 
 
3.1.5  Functional Description 
To minimise the risk of the “Home Condition Report Registration ” service failing, the operations 
that the service performs should be reduced to the absolute essentials. Consequently operations 
such as formatting the Home Condition Report PDF, which would logically be most efficiently 
implemented at the point of registration, are out of scope because they are processing intensive 
and possibly subject to a high level of error occurrences. 
Consequently, upon receipt of ConditionReportCreateRequest_1 message, the minimum 
functional requirements of the service are: 
 
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• 
Validates the message and contents to ensure that it is a valid message as per standard 
data validation criteria. If any validation errors occur then an Exceptions List, with one 
exception per error, is created and returned as the response to the client. 
• 
If the message is valid then store the Home Condition Report in the Home Condition Report 
Register and the Report Reference Number (RRN) is returned to the Home Condition 
Report Registrar in the Message Content section. 
However in order to minimise the impact of a failure in the database management software4 it is 
recommended that a mechanism exists for placing the Home Condition Report on a deferred 
process queue for insertion once the Home Condition Report Register is available. 
So the lodgement process looks something like this:  
RAW03000 - Lodge HCR
trar
At this point the only
is
thing that can go wrong
We would expect
g
to take this path
e
03005:
is technical - the report
Lodge HCR
cannot be invalid
99.9% of times
Request
CR R
H
03015:
03020:
03030:
03035:
MS:
03010:
Yes
Is register
Yes
Insert into
Format
Send registration
r
Register_HCR
Is HCR Valid?
available?
database
response
outcome response
rato
No
Queue should
be persistent
storage
ter Ope
03025:
s
Put on Queue
gi
e
04000:
Temporary
CR R
storage
H
No
 
 
In the eventuality that the Home Condition Report is be queued for insertion then the 
ConditionReportCreateResponse message will contain a warning “OnQueue” in the 
Configuration section that indicates the actual insertion has been deferred. This is still a successful 
registration of the Home Condition Report and it is the Home Condition Report Register Operator’s 
responsibility to guarantee retention of the document from this point. 
3.1.6  Processing the Registration Queue 
The processing of the queue is a simply a matter of periodically reading the temporary storage and 
processing any Home Condition Reports stored there. This looks something like this: 
                                            
4  
This is not presupposing that any commercial database solution is assumed but does assume that the data 
storage solution will be a managed environment with pre-defined processes for inserting data into that managed 
environment. It is equally assumed that these processes can, and indeed will, fail at some inconvenient point in 
time. 
 
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RAW04000 - Process Queue
04005:
04025:
r
Process Queue
Wait
No
Request
erato
Op
04010:
Database
No
ister 
g
Available?
e
 R
04015:
04035:
04020:
04030:
Read from
Delete from
Yes
Queued
Yes
Insert into
Temporary
Temporary
Report?
database
HCR
Storage
Storage
 
 
This is a simple infinite loop that reads a Home Condition Report in temporary storage and if a 
report is present then moves it into the database and removes it from temporary storage. If no 
reports are in temporary storage then the process wait some predetermined amount of time before 
starting again. 
3.2  CHANGE HOME CONDITION REPORT STATUS 
3.2.1  Context & Overview 
The status of a Home Condition Report may change during its lifecycle to indicate the usability and 
reliability of the Home Condition Report. Some possible scenarios for this are: 
• 
The Home Condition Report is flawed and the Home Inspector and Seller mutually agree 
that the Home Condition Report should be cancelled and a more accurate Home Condition 
Report is subsequently registered. 

• 
A serious complaint is received by the Certification Scheme who request that the Home 
Condition Report is placed “Under Appeal” whilst the complaint is investigated. 

• 
A complaint about the content of the Home Condition Report is rejected by the Certification 
Scheme Complaints & Disciplinary board and the status is amended back to “Registered”. 

In all of these cases it is necessary to update the status of the Home Condition Report recorded in 
the Home Condition Report Register needs. 
Once lodged, the status of a Home Condition Report can only be altered with the approval from the 
Certification Scheme. Consequently all requests, whether made directly to the Certification 
Schema or via its Complaints & Disciplinary Body, will be sent to the Home Condition Report 
Register by the Certification Scheme that certified the Home Inspector who submitted the Home 
Condition Report.  
On receiving confirmation that the status of a Home Condition Report has been change the 
Certification Scheme is responsible for informing the Home Inspector and the Home Condition 
Report Supplier of the change of Home Condition Report status. The method of notification is out 
of scope. 
Therefore the overall process for changing the status of a Home Condition Report looks like this: 
 
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RAW05000 - HCR Register - Change of Registered Status
 and
05025:
Must inform the HI and the HCR
s
05005:
Receive
supplier of the change of status
int
linary
Request to change
notification of
(the method of notification is out
a
p
registered status
refusal
of scope)
pl
isci
om
D
No
C
MS:
MS: Request_To_Alter_Status
Refusal_To_Change_
n
HCR_Status
io
at
ic
05015:
05035:
05040:
05020:
if
 Is request
Receive
Receive
 Evaluate Request
Scheme
valid?
confirmation
confirmation
Cert
r
a
05030:
str
MS:
Yes
Change
Change_Of_HCR_
MS: Change_Status
status of HCR
HCR
egi
Status_Confirmation
locally
R
er
tor
05020:
gist
 Change status of
HCR
era
e
p
HCR
R
O
 
Within this overall process the Home Condition Report Register Operator is only responsible for 
managing the status of the Home Condition Report stored in the Home Condition Report Register.  
3.2.2  Service Operational Requirements 
It is estimated that less than 0.1% of Home Condition Reports will need to go through a change of 
status. This processing should have have a negligible demand on computing and processing 
capabilities of the Home Condition Report Register. 
The Status Change is not a mission critical or high-performance operation – the maximum time 
allowed to process a Status Change Request is by the beginning of the following operational day 
after it has been received, although it is expected that the request should normally be processed 
electronically in a matter of seconds. 
3.2.3  Request Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportChangeStatusRequest_1.xsd 
 
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3.2.4  Response Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportChangeStatusResponse_1.xsd 
 
 
3.2.5  Functional Description 
[ASM: Add description of process as per previous service.] 
The specific process is: 
 
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RAW05000 - HCR Register - Change of Registered Status
on
e
ati
05005:
ic
Request to
05005:
change registered
Status Changed
Schem
status
Certif
ster
ator
MS:
05020:
MS:
Request _For_Change
 Change status of
Change_Of_HCR_
HCR
per
_Of_Status
HCR
Status_Confirmation
Regi
O
 
 
In receipt of the ConditionReportChangeStatusRequest the process: 
Check that Request::OldStatus Æ Request::NewStatus is a valid transition (see state-
transition chart below). If invalid  
Then 
 
Return a "Invalid State Transition" response. 
End if ; 
Locate Home Condition Report where HCR::RRN = Request::RRN. 
If Home Condition Report is not found  
Then 
 
Return a "Home Condition Report not found " response. 
Else – Home Condition Report found 
 
If HCR::Status = Request::OldStatus 
 Then 
 
 
Update HCR::Status to Request::NewStatus. 
 
 
Return “Success” response. 
 Else 
 
 
Return "Incorrect Status" Response. 
 
End if ; 
End if ; 
The full state-transition chart for the Home Condition Report is: 
 
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sm HCR State Changes
Registered
Initial
Published
Submitted
Entered
Rej ected
Under Appeal
Cancelled
Final
Flag for
Removal
This occurs when the report has 
reached its maximum retention 
date - probably 15 years after its 
lodgement date.
Remov ed
Purge
Purged
 
For the Home Condition Report Register the valid Status Codes of a Home Condition Report are 
the ones enclosed by the “Registered” state namely {Entered, Under Appeal, Cancelled}. 
3.3  HOME CONDITION REPORT INDEX & PORTAL SERVICES 
3.3.1  Context & Overview 
The Home Condition Report Index & Portal Services will be the primary means for anyone with an 
interest in a Home Condition Report to retrieve an authentic copy of the Home Condition Report.  
This could be the Home Information Pack Provider, Mortgage Lender, Buyer, Seller or any of their 
agents. 
Some scenarios in which an electronic copy of the Home Condition Report, or the data, are 
required are: 
• 
A member of the General Public wants an electronic copy of a Home Condition Report to 
check its authenticity. 

• 
A Mortgage Lender, in the process of valuing a Property, requires access to the original 
data used in Sections B & C to use in Automated Valuation Model software. The Report 
Reference Number given to the Mortgage Lender may not be the most recent Home 
Condition Report – there are a number of possible reasons for this – so given a particular 
Report Reference Number they want any more recent Home Condition Report returned 
instead.  

 
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• 
A Home Information Pack Provider in the process of assembling a Home Information Pack 
is required to include all previous Home Condition Reports relating to a particular Property. 
So given the Report Reference Number of a recently completed Home Condition Report 
they want to retrieve that Home Condition Report and all previous ones within the last 12 
months. 

However given that there are likely to be many Certification Schemes, and each of these 
Certification Schemes may delegate the ability to register Home Condition Report and maintain a 
local Home Condition Report Register to one or more Home Condition Report Registrars, it may be 
difficult to locate which of the many possible Local Registers contains the appropriate or relevant 
Home Condition Reports.  
Consequently the Home Condition Report Register Operator will be responsible for providing a  
Home Condition Report Index containing the basic details of all registered Home Condition Reports 
and provide a portal service (see “What is a Portal Service?”) that can route any retrieval request 
to the appropriate Home Condition Report Registrar for processing. 
The overall business process looks like this: 
RAW07000 - HCR Register User Access
This is a break in the overall
process where the user does
something out of scope.
 User
07005:
07040:
07035:
07060:
Receives HCR or
Request retrieval
Receive index of
Receives HCR
RRN
of specific HCR
tered
HCRs
data structure
(based on index)
MS:
MS:
Regis
Request_For_HCR(s)
Send_Index_Of_HCRs
07015:
07030:
Search index for
List Required?
Yes
Sends index of
all HCRs in last
HCRs
12 months.
MS:
ator
No
Request-Specific_HCRs
r Oper
07025:
07050:
te
Is most recent
Yes
Identify most
MS:
requested?
recent
Send_HCR
gis
HCR Re
07045:
No
Retrieve via portal
MS:
Request_For_HCR
r
ra
07055:
Retrieve HCR
HCR
data
Regist
 
 
Because it is a portal service it is expected that the Request Message for a single Home Condition 
Report should be passed straight through to the Home Condition Report Registrar with the address 
of the originator of the request and the Response Message is sent directly from the Home 
Condition Report Registrar to the Requestor. 
The request that is forwarded to the appropriate Home Condition Report Register could be the 
same request that the Home Condition Report Register Operator receives from the originator of the 
request i.e. the message at 07045 can be the same message as received at 07015. 
3.3.2  Service Operational Requirements 
The Home Condition Report Retrieve service is a mission critical service but not time critical 
therefore it is acceptable to take several seconds – but not several minutes - for the response to be 
 
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returned to the requestor. In the vast majority of cases it is expected for this to be around 10 – 15 
seconds but in periods of heavy usage may be longer. 
It is estimated that approximately 7 to 10 accesses will be performed per Home Condition Report 
during the course of its life so the estimated number of Home Condition Report Retrieval Requests 
is between 11,200,000 and 18,000,000 per annum.  
Given that the Home Condition Report Portal is the first ‘point-of-contact’ for anyone who wants 
access to a Home Condition Report then the Home Condition Report Retrieval service 
consequently receives 100% of all requests to retrieve an Home Condition Report, irrespective of 
which Home Condition Report Registrar holds the Home Condition Report or whether the user who 
wants access is Registered or otherwise. 
However if the portal is not available, the Home Condition Report can be retrieved directly through 
the URL (this is contained within the report). This URL may be invalid in certain circumstances but 
this is regarded as being of a low risk. 
3.3.3  Request Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportRetrieveRequest_1.xsd 
 
Being a “search” message the request provides a number of configuration parameters to allow the 
requestor to control what actions the service is to perform depending on the data found. The 
configuration parameters are:  
Criteria 
Notes 
Start Date 
The earliest date of any report to be included in the retrieval list where a 
list of related reports is returned rather than the individual report. 
Language 
Identifies which language the requestor desires the report in. Allowed 
values are English and Welsh with the default being English. 
Note that the Home Condition Report is not necessarily registered in 
both languages so a request that may succeed in one language may fail 
in the other. 
Language Code is allowed because the requestor may have the Report 
 
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Reference Number for the report in one language and want to read the 
report in the other language. 
A value of “?” is allowed where the requestor doesn’t care which 
language is returned as in the case where the valuation data is required. 
Response Format  Identifies the type of response the requestor wants from the service. 
Valid Values are: 
List – Indicates that the requestor wants a list of historic reports related 
to the specified report rather than just retrieving that report. This 
is used by Home Information Pack Providers to find a list of 
related reports that potentially should be included in the Home 
Information Pack. 
PDF – Indicates that the requestor wants the PDF version of the Home 
Condition Report returning. This parameter is ignored by the 
Home Condition Report Register Operator but is required by the 
Home Condition Report Registrar. 
Data – Indicates that the requestor, usually a Mortgage Lender, wants 
the structured XML data returned rather than the PDF. 
 
Retrieve Latest 
Indicates whether the requestor wants any later report if it exists is to be 
returned instead of the specified report. This is used by Mortgage 
Lenders to ensure that they are always basing their lending decisions on 
the most recent report.  
 
3.3.4  Response Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: ConditionReportRetrieveResponse_1.xsd 
 
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3.3.5  Functional Description 
This process allows for an unregistered user to select an Home Condition Report by Report 
Reference Number from the search results made available by the Home Condition Report Index 
(managed by Home Condition Report Register Operator).  After selecting the Home Condition 
Report the user initiates the process to retrieve the Home Condition Report which may either be in 
PDF or XML format. 
 
On receipt of the ConditionReportRetrieveRequest_1 message the process outline is: 
Retrieve from index where Report::RRN = Request::RRN and Report:Language-Code = 
Request::Language.. 
If Home Condition Report found 
Then 
 If 
Request::HistoryIncluded 
 Then 
Find other reports where Report::UPRN = This::UPRN and Report::Completion-
Date after Request::StartDate.(1) 
Return Report::Report-Header for each found Report. (2) 
 
Else -- single report 
  If 
Request::RetrieveLatest 
  Then 
   Find 
later 
report(3). 
 
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End if ; 
 
 
Forward request to Report::HCR-Registrar.(4) 
 
End if ; 
Else 
 
Return "Report Reference Number not found" exception message. 
End if ; 
Notes: 
(1) 
The default is to return all Home Condition Report completed within the last 12 months for 
the Property but if the current Seller purchased the property within 12 months of the most 
recent Home Condition Report, then this is specified in the Request::StartDate5 and only 
Home Condition Reports completed after that date are listed. This check can be performed 
against the information held in the Home Condition Report Index. 
(2) 
A list of Home Condition Reports is returned to the requestor for selecting the individual 
reports that they want. This facility is primarily for Home Information Pack Providers who 
may need to identify which reports to include. 
(3) 
A later Home Condition Report is identified from the Completion-Date of the Home 
Condition Report being later than the Completion-Date of the Home Condition Report 
identified by the input Report Reference Number and not the Inspection-Date.  
(4) 
The Home Condition Report Index should contain enough details about the Home Condition 
Report Registrar to identify where the request is to be routed. Exact details required from 
each Certification Scheme / Home Condition Report Registrar in order to reliably re-route 
the Request Message will need to be identified by the Home Condition Report Register 
Operator. Any required data-items will need to be supplied as part of the User Registration 
process specified by the Home Condition Report Register Operator. 
How the Home Condition Report Registrar processes the request that it receives is outside the 
scope of this service description  
3.4  SEARCH HOME INSPECTOR REGISTER INDEX 
3.4.1  Context & Overview 
The Housing Act 2004 requires that a public register of Home Inspectors is maintained. Possible 
scenarios for using the Home Inspector Register are: 
• 
A member of the General Public wants to commission a Home Condition Report as part of 
a Home Information Pack that they are assembling themselves and want a list of Home 
Inspectors that cover the Sellers locality and potentially wants a Home Inspector qualified to 
inspect a particular type of unusual property. 

• 
A member of the General Public has the Certificate Number / Name / E-Mail Address of a 
Home Inspector and, for whatever reason, wants to lookup further details of the Home 
Inspector such as details of the Certification Scheme they are certified by. 

• 
When a Home Condition Report is submitted to the Home Condition Report Register for 
registration it is required that the Home Inspector details are validated to ensure the basic 

                                            
5  
The Home Information Pack Providers could do this filtering manually (and probably will) but following advice 
from the Data Protection Registrar we provide this parameter to meet legislative requirements so that the date 
can be provided if both relevant and known. 
 
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authenticity of the Home Inspector i.e. that they exist, are currently certified to carry out an 
inspection and are currently a member of at least one Certification Scheme. 

• 
When a Certification Scheme processes an application from a Candidate Home Inspector 
for certifying through that scheme, the Certification Scheme is required to check whether 
the Home Inspector is registered with any other Certification scheme and, if so, that they 
are not “Struck Off” or otherwise barred from performing a home inspection. 

However given that there are likely to be many Certification Schemes it is unreasonable to expect 
the interested party to search all the local Home Inspector Registers to discover the details of the 
relevant Home Inspectors. This leads to a very complex and error prone distributed process. 
Consequently the Home Condition Report Register Operator will be responsible for providing a 
central Home Inspector Search service that acts as a portal service (see “What is a Portal 
Service?
”) that aggregates the public information for all Home Inspectors into a single Home 
Inspector Register.  
3.4.2  Service Operational Requirements 
Provision of a Home Inspector Register by each Certification Scheme is a legislative requirement 
to allow the General Public to look up details of Home Inspectors. Consequently the ability to 
search the Home Inspector Register is expected to be available most of the time. However there is 
little impact if it is unavailable for short periods of time. 
For on-line searches the response times should be in line with normal internet web-page 
responses i.e. less than 1 minute between submitting the search request and displaying the list of 
resulting matches. 
The content of the Home Inspector Register needs to be accurate and complete and reflect the 
state of all Home Inspectors as at the close of business the previous day. The assumption is that a 
newly certified Home Inspector would not be performing home inspections on the day that they 
become certified because the details of their certification would be in the post (or whatever delivery 
mechanism is used to courier it to them). 
However with the requirement to validate the reference to the Home Inspector during Home 
Condition Report Registration – i.e. that the Home Inspector exists in the Home Inspector Register 
and was certified to practicing at the time of the inspection – then it is necessary that the Search 
Home Inspector Register service has the same operational characteristics as the Home Condition 
Report Registration Service itself. If the Home Inspector details cannot be validated then the Home 
Condition Report Registration cannot take place. 
3.4.3  Request Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: HomeInspectorSearchRequest_1.xsd 
 
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Note that the search criteria can, and probably will, be expanded over time to include more data-
items as requirements mature e.g. special qualifications such as ability to inspect a Thatched Roof 
may be included if the need is identified. Once the technical standards have been published 
changes should be made through the Change Management process6 managed by the Home 
Condition Report Register Operator (see Section 5.2). 
Therefore this list is not to be regarded as a definitive list of criteria. 
Some of the parameters allow more complex searches than just an exact match of values against 
the Home Inspector Register. 
Criteria 
Search 
Notes 
Type 
E-Mail Address 
Exact 
The entire e-mail address is used for an exact match 
against the Home Inspector Register – it is a unique 
identifier for the Home Inspector so should identify at 
most one Home Inspector. 
Post Town 
Exact 
 
Postcode 
Partial 
Match on leading parts of a postcode including any 
embedded spaces e.g. “NN1” would match {NN1, NN10, 
…, NN19} whereas “NN1 “ (with a trailing space) would 
match {NN1} but not match {NN10, …, NN19}. 
The search is case insensitive. 
Registration 
Exact 
The Home Inspector Inspection Number is a unique 
                                            
6  
This process is to be defined but will probably involve the Advisory Body and industry stakeholders in the 
decision making process. 
 
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Number 
identifier for the Home Inspector so should identify at 
most one Home Inspector. 
Surname 
Partial 
The search is case insensitive. 
 
3.4.4  Response Interface Definition 
XML Schema Definition File: HomeInspectorSearchResponse_1.xsd 
 
 
3.4.5  Functional Description 
The specific process is: 
RAW12000 - Search Home Inspector Index
lic
12005:
b
Submit search
12030:
criteria to retrieve
Receive List of HI’s
Pu
HI details
MS:
12010:
MS:
Search_HI_Details
Search for HI
HCR
Forward_HI_Details
details
Register
Operator
 
On receipt of the HomeInspectorSearchRequest_1 message the process description is: 
Validate search criteria, for each invalid criterion raise an exception. 
If any exception  
 
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Then 
 
Return Exception List Response. 
Else 
For each Home Inspector in Search Home Inspector Register matching Search 
Criteria 
Loop 
 Add Home Inspector details to Registered User List. 
End loop ; 
Set Configuration data-items to appropriate values. 
Return Registered User List Response. 
End if ; 
Optional configuration parameters - defined in the SearchRequestConfigBlock - may restrict the 
content of the response e.g. RecordsToRetrieve defines the maximum number of records to 
include in a response. 
3.4.6  Other details 
Although there are numerous ways in which this service can be implemented it is suggested that 
the Home Inspector Register is implemented as a central readable data-set that is refreshed by 
periodically retrieving up-to-date Home Inspector details from each of the Certification Scheme 
Home Inspector Registers. 
Two main alternative approaches have been considered, which are: 
• 
Create a distributed query that searches each Certification Scheme Home Inspector 
Register and aggregate the search results into a single response at the time the request is 
made.  
• 
Create a central data-set that is updated in real-time by messages that are published by 
each Certification Scheme as amendments are applied to the Certification Scheme Home 
Inspector Registers. 
Both cases are viable approaches but represent significantly more complex solutions with little or 
no additional functional benefit.  
Although a suggestion has been made it is up to the Home Condition Report Register Operator to 
define the approach that they will want to take and publish details of any interface for the 
Certification Scheme Home Inspector Registers that they require the Certification Scheme to 
implement 
Irrespective of the approach taken, it is the responsibility of the Home Condition Report Register 
Operator to ensure that any response returned by the public facing service is a complete and 
accurate subset of the Home Inspector Register. 
3.5  PROPERTY & ADDRESSING DATABASE 
3.5.1  Context & Overview 
Due to the highly distributed nature of the Home Condition Report marketplace there is a 
significant issue with enforcing consistency across the entire marketplace. A particular area where 
consistency is essential is in the identification and addressing of each Property being reported on. 
Some scenarios where consistency is required are: 
 
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A Property may have a number of different addresses associated with it in addition to the 
primary or “official” address for example the street may have more than one name or the 
owner decided to give the house a name. In order to maintain consistency it is essential 
that all Home Condition Reports relating to an individual property consistently have the 
correct address shown on the report. 

Over time the identifying characteristics of a Property can change e.g. a Royal Mail 
Postcode reorganisation may result in a postcode change for the Property therefore the 
address of the Property is not sufficient 

A Property in Wales has both an English and a Welsh Address and when producing a 
Home Condition Report in one of those languages the Home Inspector should consistently 
use the correct address in the relevant language. 

For all of these cases a shared central database of Property & Address details is the most obvious 
way of achieving consistency both cost effectively and in the required timescales. 
3.5.2  Functional Description 
Due to the large number of existing data-sets7 or service providers – such as Ordnance Survey 
Addresspoint, Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF), National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG) 
or National Land Information Service (NLIS) – that could be used either to directly satisfy these 
requirements or form a significant foundation rto meeting the requirements. Therefore this section 
refrains from providing detailed interface specifications. 
Instead the section provides descriptive overview and references appropriate external standards 
that need to be supported. 
The primary data requirements are: 
• 
Provision of a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) that uniquely identifies every 
distinct "saleable" property in England & Wales. This includes flats within buildings, multiple 
houses on shared land etc.  
• 
The minimum data requirements for each Property are as specified in BS7666 which 
includes Unique Property Reference Number, Primary Address, Title Deed Number, 
Secondary and Alternative Addresses e.g. English / Welsh equivalents of same property, 
local aliases etc, BS7666 formatted addresses. 
This produces a core data model8 as follows: 
                                            
7  
Our preferred option would be to use the National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG) maintained Unique 
Property Reference Number which has a number of significant advantages over the alternatives and, in 
particular, that this would make the Home Condition Report property reference consistent with the Unique 
Property Reference Number used to carry out searches against Local Authorities and Utility Companies.  
However at the moment there appears to be a licensing impasse between Ordnance Survey and National Land 
& Property Gazetteer that makes this preferred approach unviable, therefore alternative approaches may be 
considered.  
If no licensing agreement is reached then the alternative is for the Home Condition Report Register Operator to 
create a bespoke addressing / property database specifically for the Home Information Pack market using the 
Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF) as a seed database. Effectively we create yet another BS7666 compliant 
Unique Property Reference Number that is different to any existing Unique Property Reference Number. 
8  
Taken from Home Condition Report High-Level Data Model [Ref 4] Section 4) 
 
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cd Property Details
Addresses
Property
Land
Located On
+  Address:  AddressType
+ Primary-Address: 
 
AddressType
+ Title-Deed-Ref: 
 
IDString
+  Is-Primary-Address:  Flag 1
PK
0..1
+  UPRN:  IDString
1
Reporting On
Home-Condition-
Report
 
The primary functional requirements are: 
• 
Address Searching - to be able to find a Property and its Unique Property Reference 
Number based on an address or partial address.  
• 
Get Primary Address for the Property referenced by the Unique Property Reference 
Number. 
Other key requirements: 
• 
To be consistently usable the dataset would also have to be available to industry – 
preferably on a free-of-charge basis – as a common lookup service to identify Properties, 
provide a simple and minimal turnaround time for adding new / missing Properties or 
Addresses to the dataset and publish regular updates for third party maintenance of local 
datasets. 
• 
Any licence agreement would have to grant secondary usage rights so that any licensed 
data-user can provide lookup services to Registered Users and their agents.Many of the 
surveying organisations use self-employed surveyors / sole traders to carry out the work on 
behalf of the licensed data-user. 
• 
The "master" copy of the data is to be maintained by the Home Condition Report Register 
Operator to enforce consistency in the central register and can ensure uniqueness of 
Unique Property Reference Number over the life of the Home Condition Report. This may 
require daily maintenance updates. 
3.5.3  Service Operational Requirements 
Because of its critical role in identifying Properties and ensuring consistency of the Property’s 
Address in a Home Condition Report the Property & Address details database has the same 
operational characteristics as the central Home Condition Report Register itself.  
However the service is not time critical therefore any lookup or search services should respond in-
line with normal internet web-page response times i.e. < 1 minute between request and response. 
 
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4  OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS  
This section outlines the general policies and data management requirements that the Home 
Condition Report Register Operator is expected to adhere to. 
4.1  USER AUTHENTICATION & AUTHORISATION 
It is incumbent on the Home Condition Report Register Operator to ensure that the internal 
integrity of the Home Condition Report is maintained over time and that the Home Condition 
Report is protected from unauthorised tampering once it has been registered in the Home 
Condition Report Register. 
The majority of the interactions, such as retrieving a Home Condition Report, are low risk 
transactions that do not require any special considerations. However because of the legal standing 
of a Home Condition Report and the impact that it can have on the marketing process, any data 
maintenance activity must operate in a secure environment. 
Consequently we are expecting every user that can modify the state of the Home Condition Report 
Register or requires access to the RAW XML data to be Registered Users and for any operations 
carried out by those Registered Users to be authenticated when the service is invoked.. 
In particular the following are the essential set of requirements for User Authentication.  
• 
The key Functional Roles that can perform restricted operations are: Home Inspector; 
Certification Scheme; Home Condition Report Supplier; Home Condition Report Registrar; 
and Mortgage Lender.   
• 
The granularity of registration is dependent on the Functional Role being performed by the 
Registered User as shown in the following table:  
Functional Role 
Registration 
Rationale 
Mortgage Lender 
Organisation 
Larger organisations building automated systems do 
not want to register potentially 1000’s of individual 
users of their applications. 
Home Condition 
Organisation 
It is the organisation that has responsibility to carry 
Report Registrar 
out the registration not the individuals working for it.  
Home Condition 
Organisation 
Different organisations had different opinions about 
Report Supplier 
or Individual 
what level of access control they would require for 
their employees so it is left to the organisation to 
decide this at the point of registration. 
 
Home Inspector 
Individual 
All Home Inspector are individuals. 
Certification 
Organisation 
All Certification Schemes are organisations. 
Scheme 
• 
Authentication should be a certificate or token based approach rather than username / 
password to allow for mass deployment of client applications such as Automated Valuation 
Models by Mortgage Lenders and Home Condition Report software for Home Inspectors. 
• 
It must be possible to ensure that any message that purports to be from a particular 
Registered User or source is in fact from that Registered User or source. 
• 
A User (either Registered or Unregistered) may only invoke services according to their role. 
They must be restricted from invoking unauthorised services. 
 
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Procedures for registering and managing Authorised Users will need to be defined by the Home 
Condition Report Register Operator and made available as a set of standard interfaces to industry 
stakeholders. 
4.2  BACKUP & RECOVERY 
Operating as a “no-loss” data environment it is essential to ensure that all the Home Condition 
Reports in the Home Condition Report Register are regularly backed-up to secondary storage – 
tape, CD etc – to protect the data from loss or corruption. 
There are no special considerations for Backup & Recoverability of the Home Condition Report 
Register database over an above the normally expected requirements for protecting the data. It is 
expected that the Home Condition Report Register Operator will define reasonable procedures for 
agreement by ODPM. 
However the following are requirements of particular consideration: 
• 
The estimated size of the database at full volume of: 
 Minimum
Maximum 
Number Of Reports 
1,600,000
1,800,000 
Average size of Home Condition Report  
50K
100K 
Average size of XML Message 
200K
250K 
Volume Per Year [A * (B + C)] (Gigabytes) 
400
630 
Volume @ 15 years (Terabytes) 
6
9.5 
• 
It is essential that the backup process does not unnecessarily impact Home Condition 
Report Register service connectivity, availability or responsiveness. 
• 
Recoverability of the application in the event of a system failure should be minimised as 
much as is feasible within the economic constraints.  
• 
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) should be in place clearly stating the step-by-step 
procedures to follow should the recovery operation be invoked.  
• 
Operational training is an often-ignored aspect that should receive a high priority. The 
recovery operation should not be jeopardised due to a lack of properly trained alternative 
staff members being available when a recovery is required.  
• 
This backup procedure should be synchronised with other affected parties.  
• 
Recovering data from the backup copies should be regularly tested to ensure integrity of 
the recovered data.  
4.3  DATA ARCHIVING & RETENTION 
The Home Condition Report is to be retained as a working document for 15 years. 
The Data Archiving process is not of immediate importance and is not considered part of the 
current Business Requirements. However at the time that archiving becomes significant all related 
information such as Home Inspector Register, Home Condition Report Index and Addressing data 
is to be retained for an equivalent period to ensure consistency and integrity across the entire data 
domain. 
 
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4.4  RESILIENCY & AVAILABILITY 
The overall availability requirements for the Home Condition Report Register and related services 
are dependent on the operational requirements of the significant user groups.  
is the following are the expected availability profiles for each of our significant groups of Registered 
Users: 
• 
Estate Agency is a 12*7 (7-day, 12-hours per day) industry for the purpose of marketing9 
new properties being normal business hours plus one hour either side. However 24*7 is 
desirable for retrieving Home Condition Reports.  
• 
Unregistered Users may wish to have read-only access to the Home Condition Report at 
any time and on any day of the week. 
• 
Home Inspectors will produce Home Condition Reports during the normal professional 
working day over a 6-day working week with possibly occasional access – e.g. to meet a 
heavy work load - later in the evening.  Hence estimated availability is 08:00 Æ 22:00; 
Monday Æ Saturday. 
• Most 
Mortgage Lenders offer on-line Mortgage Quotation facilities that can be accessed 
24*7 by the public in order to get a preliminary offer of a mortgage. 
If the Home Condition Report needs to be available to value the property as part of offering 
a quotation then read-only access would normally be required to match the availability of 
the Lender’s Mortgage Quotation facility. 
• 
Certification Schemes would only require access to modify details of Home Inspectors as 
part of their standard business operations.  
Therefore access would be required during the normal professional working day over a 5-
day working week.  Hence estimated availability is 08:00 Æ 18:00; Monday Æ Friday. 
However the suggested method of updating the Home Inspector Register wouild require 
overnight access to bulk process the changes made during the day. 
• 
Home Condition Report Registrar. It is expected that the Home Condition Report 
Registrations will be submitted as a mixture of overnight bulk-submission files and single 
ad-hoc registrations taking place during the day.  
A key business requirement is that the Home Condition Report Register and its processes be 
available in a way that any organisation that relies upon it for their own processes to take place is 
able to conduct their business without delay or obstruction. 
4.5  FLEXIBILITY & EXTENSIBILITY 
critical business driver is being able to extend the Home Condition Report Business 
Information Model10.  
The data model will almost certainly be extended to integrate new information and it should be 
assumed that all Business Entities may be extended at any time and that the optional extensions 
may or may not be pre-notified to support staff. 
Hence a significant design criterion is that all the API’s derived from the data model must be easily 
extensible without incurring significant impact or unnecessary changes to any existing software.  
Wherever it does not incur significant risk of not delivering other requirements then “Design for 
Change” is the maxim. The XML Messages themselves have been deliberately designed for 
                                            
9  
The legislation covers the “marketing” of a property not just selling it. So a Property that is marketed but not sold 
would still require a Home Information Pack and hence a Home Condition Report to be produced. 
10  
As described in the Home Condition Report UML Data Model [Ref 5] 
 
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extensibility (e.g. using xs:all rather than xs:sequence to avoid ordering data-items so additional 
data-items can be added without having to preserve order) and it is expected that this design 
principle is carried through into the Home Condition Report Register itself. 
4.6  DISASTER RECOVERY 
Disaster recovery has to cover a lot more than just the system components and should include 
personnel and location as well as functionality.  The main consideration is the ability to provide the 
same functionality at a different site with alternative communications, with as close a replication of 
the system data as possible to the point in time of failure. 
It is expected that a standby system should be in place allowing for an automatic switchover in the 
event the main system malfunctions or becomes unavailable, thus providing for minimal system 
outage. This transition should be transparent to the outside world and invoking the operation from 
the off-site recovery site should take no longer than one working day. 
It is the responsibility of the Home Condition Report Register Operator to develop and agree 
acceptable and cost effective procedures for disaster recovery that minimises the impact of any 
major system outage on the housing market.  
 
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5  OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES 
Although not part of the initial procurement this section describes a number of known requirements 
that may potentially have to be supported during the life of the contract. Consequently it is 
expected that any proposed solution should, wherever possible, take these requirements into 
consideration in order to ensure that the cost and impact of any changes are minimised. 
5.1  CHANGE MANAGEMENT 
In any organisation change inevitably occurs, which may cause the Home Condition Report 
Register Technical Standards to be changed as a result. Due to the legislative nature of the  Home 
Condition Report it is not expected that change to the structural definition of the it will occur often – 
perhaps only once every few years once the Home Condition Report has stabilised - but change 
nonetheless has to be catered for. 
It is expected that the Home Condition Report Register Operator should act as the ODPM agent to 
manage any changes to the Home Condition Report Standards including the Home Condition 
Report Data Model, all XML Message Specifications, the Mandatory & Preferred Text and all 
documentation relating to definition of the Home Condition Report. 
The decision-making point of whether a requested change will be implemented or not remains with 
ODPM as the owner of the standards, but it is expected that all other aspects of the Change 
Management process will be carried out by the Home Condition Report Register Operator which 
will include: 
• 
Liaison with key industry stakeholders, such as Certification Schemes, for impact analysis 
of proposed changes. 
• 
Liaison with key standards bodies such as PISCES and e-Government Unit regarding the 
published standards and managing any conflicts / overlaps with external standards. 
• 
Coordinating implementation of agreed changes. 
• 
Setting timescales for changes and the implementation of those changes  
It is expected that the Home Condition Report Register Operator will define and publish a Change 
Management process as part of their submission. Due to the extremely low volatility of the Home 
Condition Report data it is expected that this proposed process should not be resource heavy to 
the extent that it cannot operate reasonably yet robust enough to minimise the risk relating to the 
implementation of a change. 
5.2  IT GOVERNANCE 
It will be the Home Condition Report Register Operators’ responsibility to govern the published 
Home Condition Report Technical Standards on behalf of the ODPM and assure industry 
adherence to them. The Home Inspector legislative or certification requirements are the 
responsibility of the Certification Scheme to enforce -. 
As part of the IT Governance responsibility the Home Condition Report Register Operator will: 
• 
Publish and circulate the Technical Standards on behalf of ODPM. 
• 
Provide advice on the correct implementation or interpretation of the published Technical 
Standards. 
• 
Monitor activity against the Home Condition Report Register to ensure adherence to the 
published standards and consistency of use across the industry. This is separate to any 
Home Inspector Quality Assurance activity carried out on behalf of a Certification Scheme. 
 
 
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6  POTENTIAL FUTURE REQUIREMENTS 
This section describes a number of known requirements that may potentially have to be supported 
within the next few years. Consequently it is expected that any proposed solution should wherever 
possible take these requirements into consideration in order to ensure that the cost and impact of 
any changes are minimised as far as possible. 
6.1  DATA HANDOVER 
With all long-term data storage capabilities there are many scenarios where the data may need to 
be bulk extracted from the repository for transferring to another repository. For example: 
The technical platform becomes obsolete – for example due to changing business 
requirements – and a non-transparent upgrade path requires the existing Home Condition 
Report data to be extracted and transferred into the new Home Condition Report Register.  

Continual non-conformance to the Service Level Agreement results in the contract being 
terminated and awarded to another supplier. The new Home Condition Report Register 
Operator may choose a different Operational Platform that requires the existing Home 
Condition Report data to be extracted and transferred during hand-over period. 

Other government departments or agencies may be granted access to the data for specific 
purposes and need to perform bulk extracts of data from the Home Condition Report 
Register for populating another repository. 

As part of any solution the Home Condition Report Register Operator will need to demonstrate: 
• 
The data can be extracted from the Home Condition Report Register in a platform neutral 
format – ideally by reconstructing the original messages – in order to migrate the data to 
another Home Condition Report Register possibly on a different operational platform. 
• 
Any proprietary or licensable software required for this extraction is identified with the 
expected cost of any licensing payment. Wherever possible at least one viable alternative 
should also be identified.  
• 
The solution allows for selective extraction of data – e.g. All Home Condition Reports 
registered between two dates – so that staged transference can occur during any handover 
period. 
The data to be included in the handover includes: 
• 
The contents of the Home Condition Report Register. 
• 
The contents of the Home Inspector Register. 
• 
The contents of the Property & Address details dataset. 
• 
The contents of the User Registration & Authentication dataset. 
The costs of Data Handover should be considered one-off additional costs and do not form part of 
the initial cost-base. However any solution should minimise the cost of data handover and 
demonstrate the necessary extension points to add this functionality later.  
6.2  BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & DATA-MINING 
At the moment there are no requirements to allow organisations access to the Home Condition 
Report Register to carry out Data-Mining or Market Analysis activities. However an on-going 
 
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aspiration is to continually improve the quality of the Home Condition Report – in particular the 
Preferred Text11 sections. 
It is intended that any analysis or reporting activities will be implemented as dedicated back-end 
server-side processes that can be scheduled for off-peak processing. 
The scope and characteristics of these reporting requirements are currently not established but 
any solution should demonstrate the ability to: 
• 
Support large scale Data-Mining activities i.e. be able to process large volumes of data in 
reasonably short timescales and provide the normal functions to extract, select, group, sort 
and summarise the data being processed. 
• 
Provide an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows 3rd-parties to develop 
bespoke batch processes to large-scale processing of the Home Condition Report Register 
contents.  
• 
Allow scheduling of any periodic reporting activities so that reports can be run regularly 
without human intervention. 
6.3  ENERGY PERFORMANCE CERTIFICATE 
The Energy Performance Certificate is newly introduced legislation requiring all properties 
including newly built properties to be assessed for their energy efficiency and a certificate 
indicating the energy rating issued.  
The content of the Energy Performance Certificate would briefly comprise Sections A & H of the 
Home Condition Report and the associated XML data. So, because of the similarity with the Home 
Condition Report, it may be decided that the best place to store the Energy Proficiency Certificate 
is in the same repository as the Home Condition Report.  
Consequently any design of the Home Condition Report Register data-store should demonstrate 
sufficient extensibility to allow for other reports in addition to the Home Condition Report to be 
recorded and indexed with the minimum of change – and ideally with no change – to the public-
facing interfaces. 
Key characteristics to consider are: 
• 
The Home Condition Report XML data already contains a Report Type data-item ([Report-
Header : Report-Type]) that should already be part of the Home Condition Report Index and 
which will be extended to allow for additional values. 
 
 
                                            
11  
See relevant Home Condition Report Mandatory & Preferred Text document [Ref 7]. 
 
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Appendix A. WHAT IS A PORTAL SERVICE? 
A Portal Service is a service that acts as an access point or intermediary for another Service 
where, for some reason the actual Service being invoked may not be directly or easily addressable 
by the Client. 
Examples of where a Portal Service would be used are: 
Data may be stored in a number of different data repositories and, for any particular 
Retrieval Operation, the actual location of the requested data is unknown therefore all 
possible repositories may need to be searched to find the data. Rather than each Client 
having to manage the complexity of orchestrating multiple Request / Response interactions 
a single Portal Service acts as an intermediary so that the complexity is hidden from the 
Client. 

Or: 
The Service to be invoked has a non-standard interface i.e. one that does not conform to 
the published messaging standard for the environment. Rather than re-implement the 
Service and duplicate functionality an intermediate Service is provided to provide a 
standard interface  

Or: 
The actual data source is restricted or sensitive so only a highly controlled view of it is to be 
revealed to the Client. In this case the intermediate Portal Service is the gateway to the 
existing services that imposes the necessary restrictions and the existing services can be 
reused without re-engineering them and impacting any other Clients. 

The first scenario is of particular interest within the Home Condition Report environment because 
of the existence of many Home Condition Report Registration Organisations each of whom may 
contain a particular Home Condition Report. Consequently when a Client, such as a Mortgage 
Lender, wants to retrieve a given Home Condition Report they potentially have to access many 
locations. 
This gives a many-to-many relationship between the Client and the Server that looks like this: 
Client A
Client B
Client C
Client D
Client E
Service A(1)
Service A(2)
Service A(3)
Service A(4)
Service A(5)
Same Service implemented in
many different locations - all of
which could be invoked in order
 
to locate some data.
 
In this topology there is a great deal of complexity because every Client needs to know the location 
of every possible Service and may need to invoke all the services in order to find a particular piece 
 
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of data. In this case the total number of possible connections is the product of the Clients and 
Services (Clients x Services).  
In addition each Client needs to know all the details necessary to invoke each Service and any 
change to the environment needs to be reported to every Client. 
So, by using a portal service to hide the complexity, the topology transforms to the following: 
Client (1)
Client (2)
Client (3)
Client (4)
Client (M)
Portal Service receives a request,
Service Portal
searches all repositories and returns
a single response no matter which
repository contains the information.
Service Agent
Service Agent
Service Agent
Service Agent
Service Agent
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(N)
 
It should be seen that the Portal Service significantly simplifies the design and the maximum 
number of possible connection paths is now the Clients plus Agents. Each Service now only has to 
reveal itself to one Client (the Portal Service) and each Client only as to invoke one Service (also 
the Portal Service). 
The following table summarises the advantages and disadvantages of using a Portal Service 
compared to not using one, comparing key issues related to implementing, managing and using 
the two different approaches in a Many-To-Many Client-Server environment. 
For each issue a rating is provided to indicate whether the approach helps to solve the issue 
(Green), makes it more difficult to resolve (Red) or has no impact (Yellow). 
Issue 
Direct Client-Service Interaction 
 
 
Portal Service 
Each data repository – e.g. a new 
 
 
When additional data sources – such 
Home Condition Report Registration 
as Home Condition Report 
Organisation – must provide access 
Registration repositories are 
Providers 
details to all Operating Entities that 
introduced. There is still only the 
may need to access their reports. 
need for a single point of update. 
A large number of notifications and 
Adding new Data 
configuration updates need to be 
made. 
Every Client must be able to 
 
 
Physical location of each data server 
ity 
recognise the physical location of 
– or even that there is more than one 
every Server and have sufficient 
– is hidden from the client. 
detail in order to talk to the relevant 
A single service is always accessed 
Extensibil
Server. 
no matter how many data 
repositories may exist in the future. 
 
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Issue 
Direct Client-Service Interaction 
 
 
Portal Service 
Multiple points of update whenever 
 
 
Single point of update whenever 
configuration changes occur so 
configuration changes occur so 
availability of a service is uncertain if 
change is more easily managed and 
configuration changes are not co-
availability is more predictable across 
Availability 
of Service 
ordinated successfully. 
multiple clients. 
Not at all straightforward to use 
 
 
Straightforward to use as there is 
Use 
only a single point of contact. 
Ease of 
Each Client incurs the cost of 
 
 
Lower cost of entry for new clients 
implementing the more complex 
because the high cost of 
service before they can enter the 
implementation is avoided. 
market. Organisations with few IT 
resources will find it difficult to start-
Cost of Entry 
up. 
Multiple points of update whenever 
 
 
Single point of update so once a new 
lity 
new data providers are introduced. 
data provider is configured their data 
is available to all clients of the Portal 
Administrative errors may lead to 
Flexibi
Service. 
some Clients not being aware of the 
new data provider is operational. 
Each Client has to manage a local 
 
 
Requires a single organisation to be 
equivalent of the Portal Service so 
responsible for publishing the service 
provides its own management 
and managing any data required for 
processes. 
running the service. 
Manageability 
Each client must develop their own 
 
 
Provides a much simpler and, hence, 
version equivalent of the Portal 
easier to implement design. 
Service to orchestrate access to the 
Only developed once then made 
distributed data repositories. 
available to all Clients enabling 
Development 
So each development team must 
significant re-use. 
understand the complexity of 
There is still however some work that 
performing multiple requests and 
needs to be done to interface to new 
orchestrating all the responses – 
services. 
significantly more technical 
knowledge is required by the client. 
Multiple clients could require multiple 
 
 
Provides a single access point and 
deployment strategies and 
hides the complexities of where the 
implementations. 
data is actually stored. 
Having a single access point 
Deployment 
provides all the benefits of the 
Service Oriented Approach. 
 
 
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Appendix B. DATA VALIDATION 
The environment surrounding the Home Condition Report Register is a highly distributed and 
decoupled environment with many different commercial organisations providing services that may 
be invoked – in some cases anonymously – from many other services. 
Consequently the environment should be regarded as low-trust and the onus is on the recipient of 
any message or data to ensure that what they receive is both valid and correct. 
Data validation consists of: 
• 
Ensuring that the message conforms to the structural definition constraints declared in the 
appropriate XML Schema Definition file. That is: 
• 
All mandatory fields are populated 
• 
Cardinality constraints are enforced 
• 
Only known data-item “tag names” are present – proprietary extensions to the 
messages are not allowed. 
• 
Checking that all “enumerated” fields only contain values from the appropriate domain.  
• 
Ensuring that any data-items containing references (or foreign keys) are valid e.g. the 
Home Condition Report contains a reference to the Home Inspector that prepared the 
report so need to check that the Home Inspector is a currently practicing and valid Home 
Inspector by checking against the Home Inspector Register. 
Other optional data validation checks could be made e.g. recalculating the RD/SAP Energy Rating 
to ensure that it is correctly derived from the data collected but this type of validation is more 
correctly regarded as “Home Inspector Quality Assurance” and should be carried out at the point 
that the Home Inspector or Home Condition Report undergoes a Quality Assurance Spot-Check by 
the Certification Scheme. 
 
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Appendix C. ERROR HANDLING 
There are two significant types of exception that can occur in any application, which are: 
• 
Platform or infrastructure level exceptions that indicate that there is something wrong with 
the environment itself such as a badly formed message, a service not being available, 
authentication failure etc. 
• 
Application level or business level errors that indicate that there was something wrong with 
the individual operation being performed or the service that what was being requested.  
The first type of exception can be considered a “Fatal” exception that when encountered abort any 
further processing. They are generally raised and processed by the infrastructure components and 
are outside the scope of the exceptions discussed here. 
The second type of exception however can generally be corrected by the individual user. More 
significantly, however, in any given request there may be multiple errors that should all be reported 
back to the client in a single response. 
Consequently application exceptions are returned to the client as part of the response instead of a 
normal “Content” block of data so the message will look something like the following (which is a 
standard “Retrieve” type message pattern): 
 
As shown, the response contains a choice between a “Content” block and an “Exception List” block 
and the Exception List contains one or more Exceptions. The Exceptions Handling XSD data 
model is defined as: 
 
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An Exception List is a set of 1 or more Exceptions with each Exception containing an Error Code, 
Error Message and a list of Data-Items to which the error relates. 
The Error Code is a numeric code that uniquely identifies each distinct error condition that may be 
raised by a particular service. It is the intention that error conditions that are common 
across multiple services should have the same error code e.g. the “Invalid Date” error 
should have the same Error Code no matter where it is raised from. 
The Error Message is then a text string of the particular error to be reported back to the client. The 
same Error Code can have multiple Error Messages depending on the context.  
For example a standard message pattern for reporting  an invalid date may be “[Data 
Value] is not a valid date for [Field Name] – [Reason]” which might then be realised as “01-
Jan-1999 is not a valid date for Reporting Date”  
As well as the Error Code and Error Message the individual Data-Items that caused the error to be 
raised are also returned in the message in order to provide the context of the error.  
Each Data-Item consists of the Data-Item Name, the value assigned to the Data-Item and 
an optional Path identifying the individual Data-Item if there is more than one occurrence of 
the Data-Item within the input message.  
For example in the “invalid date” example the Data-Item details returned would be 
“Reporting Date” and “01-Jan-1999”. 
An example of an Exception List would therefore look something like this: 
<ExceptionList> 
 <Exception> 
  
<ErrorCode>0001</ErrorCode> 
 
 
<ErrorMessage>"01-Jan-1999 is not a valid date for Home-Condition-Report Completion-
Date"</ErrorMessage> 
  
<DataItemList> 
  
 
<DataItem> 
 
   <ItemName>Completion-Date</ItemName> 
 
   <Value>01-Jan-1999</Value> 
 
 
 
 
<!-- path is not required because there is only one Completion-Date in the HCR --

  
</DataItemList> 
 </Exception> 
 <Exception> 
  
<ErrorCode>0002</ErrorCode> 
 
 
<ErrorMessage>Completion-Date must not be earlier than Inspection-Date</ErrorMessage> 
  
<DataItemList> 
  
 
<DataItem> 
 
   <ItemName>Completion-Date</ItemName> 
 
   <Value>01-Jan-1999</Value> 
 
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</DataItem> 
  
 
<DataItem> 
 
   <ItemName>Inspection-Date</ItemName> 
 
   <Value>02-Jan-2006</Value> 
  
 
</DataItem> 
  
</DataItemList> 
 </Exception> 
</ExceptionList> 
 
Note:  The same data-item – in this case Completion-Date – can appear more than once in the 
Exception List because a single invalid data-item may give rise to multiple error conditions. 
This is a natural side-effect of continuing with validation after an error is encountered rather 
than simply returning a failure on the first error encountered.  
 
 
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Appendix D. GLOSSARY & ACRONYMS 
The Glossary contains the terms and acronyms used within this document whose 
definitions and meanings are defined elsewhere. 
Term 
Meaning 
Defined In 
Certification Scheme 
An organisation responsible for certifying that a Home Inspector is 
Housing Act 2004 
qualified, “fit & proper” and insured to carry out a home inspection 
and complete a Home Condition Report. 
Database of Record 
In a distributed and replicated environment the Database of Record is 
 
the repository designated as the definitive copy of data that is 
regarded as authoritive in the case where any doubt is expressed 
over the authenticity of the data. It is also the point from which any 
replicated copies can be restored from. 
Functional Role 
A named group of users that perform a set role within a given 
Business Processes 
environment with responsibility for carrying out a pre-defined set of 
operations. 
Home Condition 
 
Housing Act 2004 
Report 
Home Condition 
The archive of all registered (i.e. authentic) Home Condition Reports 
Housing Act 2004 
Report Register 
as described in the Housing Act 2004 and subsequent legislation. 
Home Condition 
An organisation or person authorised to register a Home Condition 
Business Processes 
Report Registrar 
Report in the Home Condition Report Register. 
Home Information 
A collection of documents compiled by the Seller or their agent prior 
Housing Act 2004 
Pack 
to marketing the Property. Part of the Home Information Pack is the 
Home Condition Report. 
Home Inspector 
A person that has been certified by a Certification Scheme as being 
Housing Act 2004 
able to carry out a home inspection and produce a Home Condition 
Report. 
Registered User 
A known user that needs to be pre-registered to perform a particular 
Business Processes 
Functional Role and can invoke the restricted services authorised for 
that role.  
Unregistered User 
Any anonymous consumer such as the Property Seller, potential 
Business Processes 
Property Buyer, Estate agents, HIP Providers and Conveyancers who 
have a regulated right to access the Home Condition Report without 
have to pre-register their identity or be authenticated. 
Unique Property 
Unique Property Reference Number that uniquely identifies every 
BS7666 
Reference Number 
distinct "saleable" property in England & Wales. This includes flats 
within building, multiple houses on shared land etc. 
Local Home 
A local sub-set of the Home Condition Report Register 
Business Processes 
Condition Report 
maintained by the Home Condition Report Registrar as a 
Register 
repository of all the Home Condition Reports that it has 
lodged. 
The reports stored in the local Home Condition Report 
Register are exactly the same as those in the central 
Home Condition Report Register and are regarded as an 
authentic copy of the registered Home Condition Report. 
The local Home Condition Report Register is outside the 
direct control of the Home Condition Report Register 
Operator. 
Address  
BS7666 
 
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Home Condition 
The organisation managing the Home Condition Report Register and 
Business Processes 
Report Register 
providing associated services on behalf of ODPM. The subject of this 
Operator 
document. 
Energy Performance 
The EU Directive requires that a valid Energy 
EU Directive 
Certificate 
Performance Certificate (or Energy Assessment or 
2002/91/EC 
"energy report") be produced that rates the energy 
efficiency of a property. 
The Home Condition Report will contain an Energy 
Performance Certificate that will enable compliance with this 
requirement of the EU Directive. 
 
Acronym 
Meaning 
URL 
Universal Resource Locator 
XML 
Extensible Mark-up Language  
XSD XML 
Schema 
Definition 
ODPM 
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 
PDF 
Portable Document Format  
HCR 
Home Condition Report 
HI Home 
Inspector 
CS Certification 
Scheme 
UPRN 
Unique Property Reference Number  
 
 
 
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Appendix E. RELATED DOCUMENTS 
This section provides a list of related documents that may provide more detail or clarification to do 
with the contents of this document. This is purely for information and none of these documents are 
prerequisites to understanding this document. 
Where the reference is a publicly available document then the reference is a hyperlink to the actual 
document. 
Ref 
Document Title or Link 
Publisher / Author 

Business Processes Model 0.6.doc – swim-lane diagrms of all thew 
ODPM – 
 
significant processes of interest to the Home Information Pack 
Programme. 

BS7666 Address Details XML schema – documents and XSD 
e-GU – 
 
describing the British Standard for Address Details.  

BS7666 Address Data Examples (PISCES) – some examples of the 
PISCES 
BS7666 standard published by PISCES. 

Home Condition Report High-Level Data Model – high level overview of 
ODPM – 
 
the detailed Home Condition Report UML Data Model. 

Home Condition Report UML Data Model – structured data model 
ODPM – 
 
providing detailed descriptions of the underlying data used to 
generate the Home Condition Report. 

HCR Mandatory & Preferred Text 
ODPM – 
 
 
 
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