EPC – A good idea, but?

EPC – A good idea, but?

9:34 AM, 26th September 2024, About 2 months ago 23

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Placing a property into an energy efficiency category and then advocating or enforcing remedial action. Sounds great – what’s not to like?

Well – if the categorisation is inconsistent and inaccurate then that’s a problem and I believe it leads to millions of misdiagnosis. On the back of the misdiagnosis, a remedy follows and often the recommended solutions are flawed or wrong, making the current system worse than useless.

In medical terms, this would equate to identifying the wrong leg as the medical issue and then performing a frontal lobotomy as the solution.

The current flawed EPC system is a “Sausage” policy. It needs to address fundamental issues before enforcing cost and inefficiency on us all, which will be passed on to tenants.

The current assessment is based on what can be seen. I had the same property assessed by two assessors and got different results. This can be easily seen by checking identical flats or houses and seeing different ratings despite having the same measures installed. One block of identical flats had assessments from B to E.

Recommendations post-diagnosis are also often expensive inefficient or wrong. In an electrically heated house, the assessor marks storage heaters above smart technology panel heaters. Storage heaters use more energy because they store and lose it when it’s not required. They are more difficult to manage use more energy for the same heat when it is needed and are expensive.

How do I know, I took storage heaters out and replaced them with smart heaters which cost less and are easier to manage and maintain the correct temperature where it is needed at a lower cost so are more energy efficient. This is one example, but in EPC terms the rating is degraded. Perhaps the Property118 community knows of others.

We need J4L – Justice for Landlords and sensible not sausage policy then everyone’s lives can be made a little easier.

Paul


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Jason

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19:38 PM, 26th September 2024, About 2 months ago

Reply to the comment left by Dylan Morris at 26/09/2024 - 15:09That’s not strictly true. The housing association round my bits are spending a fortune. They are going round fitting new roofs, gutters and solar panels, literally hundreds of houses. With property on heating oil they are upsizing radiators and fitting heat pumps. What I don’t know is how all this is being funded. It’s certainly not the tenants as no to little increase in rent.

Corrections I found it the government has granted £8m and they have matched it so £16m in total. So here an answer for the PRS 50% grant might work.

Jason

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19:50 PM, 26th September 2024, About 2 months ago

Reply to the comment left by Dylan Morris at 26/09/2024 - 15:09
That’s not strictly true the housing association round my way is replacing people’s roofs, gutters and fittings solar panels and for those on oil get bigger rads and a heat pump. The rent hasn’t changed. Literally 100s of houses. They have secured a £8m grant from government and matching the £8m so £16m in total. This could work for PRS, 50/50 split as in theory it should add value to the property.

Beaver

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12:00 PM, 27th September 2024, About 2 months ago

Reply to the comment left by Neil P at 26/09/2024 - 18:54
This is correct. But when politicians are grandstanding at climate change events or for the media in an attempt to publicise themselves, their parties and what they are doing they aren't interested in the detail of what the real environmental impact of their policies is. Often they don't understand what they are doing and don't learn the lessons of history.

A lot of our houses are built of bricks and tiles that were baked with coal. The CO2 from that burned coal is already in the atmosphere. If they bulldoze all those old houses and build new ones they need to look at the environmental impact of both the demolition and the costs of the new build, not just at the performance of the houses themselves. And they need to look at the impact on both tenants and rents and work out how they are going to finance their grand schemes.

Over 20 years ago John Prescott launched a project in Liverpool to bulldoze homes with an estimated cost of £2.2 billion.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281054/Houses-bought-70-000-John-Prescotts-regeneration-Pathfinder-scheme-sold-just-1-each.html

Part of the project was the Granby Triangle, which reportedly largely avoided demolition due to the 'resilience' of residents who resisted pressure to leave the 'blighted properties'. Those were the properties that the tenants and residents liked but the politicians didn't because they didn't fit their view of the world.

Tenants may wish to stay in properties rated D, E or F and in a situation where rental property is very scarce it may well be their best option to trade lower rents and perhaps changes in their behaviour and lifestyle for some politician's utopian dream.

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