A lettings agent claims progress on climate change and energy efficiency is likely to be undermined by what he calls “dodgy landlords.”

Ajay Jagota, who runs the KIS agency in Tyne & Wear and who also operates a claims management service called Veriwise, believes some landlord’s unwillingness to make basic repairs to their properties suggests they are highly unlikely to invest in energy efficiency measures.

Jagota says government figures show that 3.2m privately rented properties in England and Wales currently have an EPC rating of D or below, with 18 per cent of privately rented households living in fuel poverty – this compares with just eight per cent of owner occupied homes.

He says: “Every day we’re contacted by renters who can’t afford to turn the heating on, whose heating doesn’t work in the first place, or who can’t keep their homes warm because all the heat goes straight out of a broken window.

“But we’re expecting the landlords who won’t fix broken windows and who are happy for their tenants to sit day in day out in damp and draughty homes to turn around and invest in heat pumps and hydrogen boilers – it’s not so much unrealistic as fantastical.”

Jagota says that he regularly hears of cases of landlord neglect and disrepair. 

“In every corner of the country there are renters asking questions like ‘’ and ‘how long can my landlord leave me without heating?’ or ‘does my landlord have to fix a broken front door?’

“Renting regulations even make it unlawful to let a property with an EPC rating below E – but national figures show that there are 89,000 such rented properties. Who is enforcing those regulations?”

For several years Jagota ran an alternative deposit service called Dlighted.