18:01 PM, 20th September 2023, About 10 months 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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Reluctant Landlord
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Sign Up12:21 PM, 21st September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 21/09/2023 - 12:00
if the focus of the EPC shifts entirely to cost saving for the tenant, then we are back to square one!
Taken to the end point here, if a LL is forced to install expensive (non governement funded/subsidised) 'cost saving' initiatives for the tenant then al that will happen is rents will rise as a result, or if the LL can't /does not want to pay for such installements, tenancies will end and properties potentially sold off as a result...
Beaver
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Sign Up12:34 PM, 21st September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 21/09/2023 - 12:21
In my experience tenants don't look at EPC certificates.
Perhaps the focus needs to shift to energy usage and where the energy is generated from. If you've got a house with solid walls, photovoltaics, a wind-generator and a ground-source heat pump why should you be penalised just because your insulation isn't perfect? You don't want the excellent becoming the enemy of the good do you?
Reluctant Landlord
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Sign Up13:58 PM, 21st September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 21/09/2023 - 12:34entirely agree. In all myyears not one tenant has ever looked or asked me a question about an EPC. The cost of the rent is key everything else is secondary. At the end of the day if it costs too much in their eyes (whatever that figure is) they just turn the heating off.
The 'savings' are based on what the cost is ON AVERAGE to actually heat the property. If the tenant comes in and infrequently uses the heating (choice or otherwise) then the EPC is pointless as they will always be paying less than any cost saved as they aren't turning the bloody heating on.
I am keeping a close eye on actual total of tentant usage of elec/gas and logging at every opportunity. This will then show what the tenant is actally using. Perfect evidence of HOW the property is used for when the whole debate of EPC rating levels raises its head again.
Perhaps more pertinent is to use the EPC iself against any accusation of damp and mould ever surfaces and being autonatically assumned it is a LL problem... I defiantely intend to raise bring the EPC and its defined average use of energy part, plus records of tenant use of electric/gas over any given period into any argument over damp and mould that may come to pass. Evidence of LL checks where wet washing hung up etc will add to a full evidential record if necessary.
Sad that we have to think this way - covering ourselves every time....
Charles Baldwin
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Sign Up11:51 AM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
Of course they backtracked. I only wish they had done so BEFORE I spent £20,000 doing the upgrades! At least I have a C rating now, for when the idiots decide to bring it back in
TheC IsHere
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Sign Up12:20 PM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
I got an EPC C rating last year on my 2 bed flat investing less than £1k (already had double glazing - main changes were internal insulation on external walls and remote heat control for each room & rad). Last winter my tenants paid £160 for the quarter of dual fuel! That means my chargeable rent can go up - everybody wins!!!
john thompson
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Sign Up12:20 PM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Jay at 20/09/2023 - 20:52Exactly, these clowns are supposed to be highly educated people, unfortunately, they have absolute zero common sense, and they are busy destroying our economy and country.
Chances are they would have better thought-out policies put forward if they had a 5-year-old in charge!
Beaver
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Sign Up12:43 PM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Charles Baldwin at 22/09/2023 - 11:51
So if you are able to advertise your property for more rent because it is band C and you are able to explain that to the tenant then that's not a bad thing. The tenant is trading a higher EPC rating for a higher rent. But that doesn't mean that we should ban tenants from living in band-D properties.
if a tenant was able to rent an E-rated property for a low rent, a slightly better D-rated property for a slightly higher rent, a C-rated property for a high rent, or an A-rated property for a very high rent, then the market could sort that out. The last time I got an EPC rating though I thought that it was b******t and the tenant didn't even look.
But in order for the market to be able to sort this out the EPC system would have to be meaningful.
TheC IsHere
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Sign Up12:52 PM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 22/09/2023 - 12:43
True - but the overall benefits and the appalling state of UK housing stock mean levers have to be applied, even if blunt.
I have another proeprty and am going to try to get it up to C (last rating was E but done work on it since). I make good money on my 2 properties as not over-leveraged and while big ticket items may have to wait a bit (solar + battery, ideally heat pump if can solve the rad/underfloor heating issue) quite cheap things like insulating wallpaper (or plaster board) and heating control (like Nest or my face, Wiser) can make a big difference and get you to C with a bit of luck. And all UK properties should have double glazing... If you go through the EPC criteria and have a good inspector there are ways of doing it without big tickets (save for DG)...
Beaver
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Sign Up13:14 PM, 22nd September 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by TheC IsHere at 22/09/2023 - 12:52
This blunt lever is probably driving landlords out of the market and driving up rents for tenants. I've got no problem with landlords improving their properties to C, B or A and charging more rent for that if that's what they want to do. But the effect of banning E and D restricts choice for tenants and landlords and restricts choice for tenants.
Graham Turrell, Landlord & Entrepreneur
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Sign Up7:20 AM, 23rd September 2023, About 10 months ago
This is successive Tory governments (once the home of free enterprise) stabbing the PRS with successive measures and now treating the open wound with Mr. Men sticking plasters.
Many notable figure predicted this fine mess back in 2015 with the iniquitous s24 and have been proven 100% correct. And still, the wound festers under the sticking plasters.