The outstanding achievements of solicitors throughout England and Wales were recently celebrated by the Law Society at a prestigious ceremony in London.

BBC broadcaster Jeremy Vine hosted the gala at the Honourable Artillery Company. The Awards rewarded outstanding achievement in the legal profession.

ABD won the 'Innovation in Business’ award for demonstrating cutting-edge business practice and client service for their innovative Home Information Pack (HIPs) service.

ABD’s dynamic and forward thinking approach to the Government’s controversial introduction of HIPs highlights the firm’s commitment to setting themselves apart from their competitors.

Several representatives of ABD, including administrators from the HIPs team, collected their award at the prestigious ‘Law Society’s Excellence Awards 2007’ ceremony.

Alistair Everett, partner at ABD took to the stage to accept the award, “We are thrilled to have won this award, and it is a huge honour to be recognised as being innovative in the way we operate.” Our aim was to develop a ‘user friendly’ approach to HIPs which provides a complete package to our customers and the feedback has been extremely positive.”

The HIPs team operate from their new premises in Marlborough and include three qualified energy assessors whose role is to visit properties and give an energy efficiency rating which is then included in the pack, together with searches and other legal documents.

Supporters of the pack say that by providing more information in advance of an agreed sale, buyers will make better informed decisions and transactions should go through faster.

The alternative view is that HIPs simply add an extra cost to moving and many estate agents fear that the 20% or so of people who apparently instruct an agent just to ‘test the market’ may be deterred and as a result there will be less properties available for sale.

“We can see both sides of the argument” said Alistair Everett. “But the Government has been determined to force this through, so we have carefully researched and produced an ‘award winning’, efficient, streamlined HIPs System with easy ordering, deferred credit and packs available to be viewed online as well as paper copies.”