18:01 PM, 20th September 2023, About A year ago 49
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Landlords will be celebrating after the government announced it will scrap the energy performance certificate (EPC) targets for homes.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled the plan – along with a ban on binning gas boilers – during a televised press conference from Downing Street.
And tenants will be celebrating too since Mr Sunak acknowledged that the cost of carrying out EPC improvements to meet a minimum rating of C would impact the rent they pay.
He said that property owners would not now be forced to make expensive upgrades in just two years’ time and the cost of energy improvements could be around £8,000.
The prime minister said: “Those plans will be scrapped and while we will continue to subsidise energy efficiency, we will never force any household to do it.”
The chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), Ben Beadle, said: “The NRLA wants to see all properties as energy efficient as possible.
“However, the uncertainty surrounding energy efficiency policy has been hugely damaging to the supply of rented properties.
“Landlords are struggling to make investment decisions without a clear idea of the Government’s direction of travel.
He continued: “It is welcome that landlords will not be required to invest substantial sums of money during a cost-of-living crisis when many are themselves struggling financially.
“However, ministers need to use the space they are creating to develop a full plan that supports the rental market to make the energy efficiency improvements we all want to see.
“This must include appropriate financial support and reform of the tax system which currently fails to support investment in energy efficiency measures.”
However, the decision to bin EPC ratings for rented homes has been slammed by Dan Wilson Craw, the deputy chief executive of Generation Rent.
He said: “Cancelling higher standards for rented homes is a colossal error by the government.
“Leaving the impact on the climate to one side, it makes the cost-of-living crisis worse and damages renters’ health.
“One in four private renters lives in fuel poverty and, without targets for landlords to improve their properties, they face many more years of unaffordable bills.”
Mr Wilson Craw continued: “Energy efficiency is also an essential part of a home’s quality.
“Backtracking leaves the government’s levelling up mission to halve the number of non-decent rented homes in shreds.
“Both tenants and landlords need support to upgrade private rented homes, and the Prime Minister recognised that ‘big government grants’ help make it affordable.
“But without higher standards, landlords have no reason to accept tenants’ requests for improvements.”
He added: “The government’s dithering over these standards in recent years has led to the housing sector being unprepared for the original 2025 deadline.
“Ditching it completely is both cruel and out of proportion to what the Prime Minister wants to achieve.”
Landlords and homeowners will also have more time to make the transition to heat pumps, and households will only have to make the switch when they’re changing their boiler – and then not until 2035.
Mr Sunak says that gas boilers will not have to be ‘ripped out’ to meet targets and that heat pumps will need to be made cheaper, so they don’t impose high costs on families.
There will be an exemption will be introduced for some households and the boiler upgrade scheme will be increased by 50% to £7,500.
Mr Sunak also postponed the 2030 deadline for buying diesel- and petrol-powered cars and vans to 2035.
That moves the deadline to the EU deadline.
However, the government remains committed to a 2050 deadline for Net Zero but will be more pragmatic and transparent about how the steps will affect people.
He said: “The risk here to those of us who care about reaching net zero, as I do, is simple: if we continue down this path, we risk losing the consent of the British people.
‘And the resulting backlash would not just be against specific policies but against the wider mission itself meaning we might never achieve our goal.
“That’s why we have to do things differently.”
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JeggNegg
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Sign Up10:21 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by john thompson at 20/09/2023 - 20:40
i agree with your comment ' unworkable policies without thinking about the long term implications.'
i believe we have these policies because they are made on the political diary.
surely an honest, non political, deep dive, long term solutions needs to be found for subjects such as housing, energy efficiency etc.
and as quickly as possible.
JeggNegg
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Sign Up10:27 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Rebecca at 21/09/2023 - 06:44
thank you for giving us an honest comment from a TENANTS's view point. i hope you see improvements in your property, keep working with your landlord as i believe you need to communicate within this partnership.
Beaver
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Sign Up10:46 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Rod at 20/09/2023 - 19:17
Agreed. The EPC system needs to be sorted out.
The EPC system is a good idea badly implemented.
Rishi was right to say that bankrupting the country won't save the environment. If you were able to rent a band E property but you knew that either you would have higher energy bills or need to turn the heat down you would have choice. If you could choose a Band A property and knew that this would cost you more in rent but you were helping to save the planet you would have choice.
If landlords could deduct more of their improvements against tax to add value to their properties via an EPC system that actually meant something then they would have more choice.
And if both landlords and tenants had more choice that would enable the market to help sort the problem out.
Teessider
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Sign Up10:49 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 21/09/2023 - 10:20
Raising to a D does have some merit.
D is the average rating. Increasing all properties, where possible, to a D rating will increase the average and make significant savings in CO2 emissions.
Targeting landlords and tenants was a bad idea. Scrapping the targets altogether is another bad idea. As a former Conservative Party member, Sunak has done nothing to convince me to vote Tory at the next election.
Our Politics is a shambles.
Beaver
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Sign Up10:55 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Teessider at 21/09/2023 - 10:49
If you were renting a band E property in a rural area without cavity wall insulation, or even a cavity wall, splitting your own logs to heat your house, maybe using a wind-generator and photovoltaics to generate energy then you'd be a tenant helping to save the planet. Hopefully you'd have a sympathetic landlord who was happy for you to live in the property for a long time as your home knowing that you were helping to look after it even if you didn't own it.
You'd have to go to some effort to do it. But a system that penalised you for doing it would only be restricting your choices and the landlord's choices. it wouldn't save the planet.
Dylan Morris
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Sign Up11:03 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Teessider at 21/09/2023 - 10:49We don’t need a reduction in CO2 emissions, that will kill us all.Trees and vegetation need CO2 to produce oxygen. CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere and there is no evidence it is increasing. Below 0.02% vegetation dies off. Where’s the facts where’s the data ? They won’t give you any. They won’t even tell you what I’ve just told you. Or exactly how any increase in CO2 effects climate change. Please folks stop buying into the mass formation psychosis.
Beaver
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Sign Up11:40 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Dylan Morris at 21/09/2023 - 11:03
There is some truth in this. Much of the science that's out there ignores some of the archaeological records. I was watching one of Neil Oliver's programmes about ancient history recently. He was in Ireland on a peat bog putting steel spikes into the peat to identify stone-age dry stone walls buried in the peat, metres down. From memory they were 5,000 years old.
The science that's out there overlooks the ability of soil to lock up carbon *IF* you were to encourage policies to increase biodiversity and improve soil health. If plants have lots of water, sunlight and CO2 they want to lock up carbon; it's how coal and gas were created in the first place. Life is about balance.
Telling tenants that they can't rent a band E property doesn't do anything positive for the environment and it never really showed leadership. What it showed was that some of our politicians had been misled by so-called experts who were just pursuing their own agendas. That business of taxing meat was a particularly egregious bit of nonsense.
Reluctant Landlord
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Sign Up11:56 AM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Teessider at 21/09/2023 - 10:49
agree. If D then it should apply to everyone equally. Home owners included. Its not as if the effect's of not doing something only make a difference on those who have to make changes. If the government has decreed there is a national target then everyone has to play their part. Housing is always being banged on about not being equal so how about measures to make it equal?
If an EPC which is to focus PURELY on CO2 is the way forward (another debate I know!) then it must apply to every house and every owner, home owner occupied or LL.
If this is the case then grants/financial assistance has to be available to all in the same breath.
Beaver
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Sign Up12:00 PM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 21/09/2023 - 11:56
If it applies only to CO2 then it's harder for the market to sort it out. Yes...rich people who want to lower their emissions may choose band A properties. But it will make little difference otherwise.
Rod
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Sign Up12:09 PM, 21st September 2023, About A year ago
Reply to the comment left by George Pearson at 21/09/2023 - 09:53
Rental properties are held to a higher standard as tenants are vote(r)s.
There is no chance that politicians would actively force (voting) owner occupiers to meet a minimum EPC in their own homes - they will leave mortgage lenders and energy companies to do this for them, in combination with building regs on improvements and renovation.
You mention hydrogen - I suspect that the government had anticipated that commercialisation of hydrogen production available at a competitive price would have advanced further than it has to date.
No doubt they are hoping that an interim use of 80% methane/20% hydrogen blend (supported by most existing boilers) will help bring down carbon numbers and keep gas fitters in work while the well publicised shortfall in grid capacity is addressed.