HOME CONDITION REPORT REGISTER & ASSOCIATED SERVICES
(ODPM Procurement Ref: 06043)
SERVICES REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION
link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 4 link to page 5 link to page 5 link to page 5 link to page 5 link to page 5 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 8 link to page 9 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 11 link to page 12 link to page 12 link to page 13 link to page 13 link to page 14 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 15 link to page 16 link to page 16 link to page 17 link to page 17 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 19 link to page 20 link to page 21 link to page 22 link to page 23 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 24 link to page 25 link to page 25 link to page 26 link to page 26 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 28 link to page 29 link to page 30 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 31 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 32 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 33 link to page 34 link to page 34 link to page 34 link to page 34 link to page 34 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35 link to page 35
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 2 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 36 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 37 link to page 38 link to page 41 link to page 42 link to page 45 link to page 47
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 3 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 4
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
(HCR
1) 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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 4 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 5 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 6 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 7 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 8 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 9
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
•
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 strings
2. 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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 9 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
•
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 10 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 11 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 12
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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 Report
3.
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 12 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 13 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 14
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
•
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 software
4 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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 14 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 15 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 16 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 17 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 18 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 19 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
•
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 20 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 21 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 22 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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).
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 23 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 24
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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::StartDate
5 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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 24 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 25 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 26
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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 process
6 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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 26 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 27 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 28 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 29 link to page 29
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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-sets
7 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 model
8 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)
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 29 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7 link to page 7
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 30 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 31 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 32 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 33 link to page 33
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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 marketing
9 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
A
critical business driver is being able to extend the Home Condition Report Business
Information Model
10.
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]
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 33 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 34 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 35 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 36 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
link to page 37
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
aspiration is to continually improve the quality of the Home Condition Report – in particular the
Preferred Text
11 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].
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 37 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 38 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 39 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 40 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 41 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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:
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 42 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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>
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 43 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
</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.
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 44 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 45 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 46 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
HOME INFORMATION PACK PROGRAMME
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
1
Business Processes Model 0.6.doc – swim-lane diagrms of all thew
ODPM –
significant processes of interest to the Home Information Pack
Programme.
2
BS7666 Address Details XML schema – documents and XSD
e-GU –
describing the British Standard for Address Details.
3
BS7666 Address Data Examples (PISCES) – some examples of the
PISCES
BS7666 standard published by PISCES.
4
Home Condition Report High-Level Data Model – high level overview of
ODPM –
the detailed Home Condition Report UML Data Model.
5
Home Condition Report UML Data Model – structured data model
ODPM –
providing detailed descriptions of the underlying data used to
generate the Home Condition Report.
6
HCR Mandatory & Preferred Text
ODPM –
Home Condition Report Register Delivery Project
Page 47 of 47
Home Condition Report Register and Associated Consolidation Services
Version 1.0
UNCLASSIFIED - Commercial in Confidence
Document Outline