Landlords will have to spend thousands to meet new government demands to improve energy efficiency in rental properties.
Geospatial technology company Kamma has released its analysis of the proposed increases to Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards in the private rental sector.
With 2.9m homes needing to improve, and an estimated average cost of £9,872 per home, Kamma says the total bill facing the sector could hit £29 billion.
Last week the government introduced the Minimum Energy Efficiency of Buildings Bill. Kamma’s analysis of its provisions raises key questions, it claims. The first of these is around costs and responsibilities.
Kamma’s analysis of the EPC register for private rental sector properties highlighted a gap in efficiency, with 65 per cent of below the target of EPC grade C, compared to a national average of 58 per cent on all properties irrespective of tenure. It would cost £29 billion to improve these rental units.
Meanwhile Kamma says cash support has been reduced from the £1.5 billion Green Homes Grant to just £562m in the form of a nationwide home upgrades fund targeting low income families.
Chief executive Orla Shields says: “The bill itself is a hugely important step in the right direction: it’s right to target poorly performing housing stock at this crucial time in the fight against climate change. More consideration needs to be given, however, to who and how this is going to be paid for.
"An increase in minimum EPC E to C is a dramatic rise and landlords won’t see any short-term benefits from lower fuel bills. Government policy is all stick and no carrot at this point.”
The second question raised by Kamma is on exemptions, which are yet to be finalised but, based on existing standards, create loopholes.
Landlords under the current minimum rating of E need to invest only up to a maximum of £3,500, which means 120,000 rental properties may theoretically still be let out after that expenditure even if they are sub-standard.
Similarly the ‘all improvements made’ exemption qualifies an additional 1,000 that have run out of viable upgrades.
Kamma contends that the obvious challenge is that both these categories of exemption will cover far more properties as the MEES is raised. The increased cost associated with increased targets means an additional 2.1m properties could qualify as exempt, equal to 73 per cent of the private rental sector.
One proposal contained in the new Bill would see the maximum investment increase to £10,000 but this would deliver a huge affordability challenge to the market and create an incentive for non-compliance, claims Kamma.
There are three per cent of rental homes below the current MEES rating of E but this number is expected to rise dramatically when the new minimum becomes C.
Kamma says this either leaves 2.8m tonnes of emissions from UK homes still pumping into the atmosphere each year, punching a hole in the Net Zero strategy for property, or would be a big cash hit on landlords, who may then decide to either not comply or leave the sector.
It also raises the question of fairness as it penalises landlords that have properties in-line with the market average of EPC D and therefore needing a cheaper route to C, whilst landlords of the worst performing properties are likely to quickly hit a cost ceiling.
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Here we go , just watch them move the goalposts in a few years time ....
By 2035 all property including the ones you live in MUST be minimum EPC C
INCLUDING THE ONE YOU LIVE IN !!! let that sink in
You'll own nothing and they'll be happy
That's the aim, the already rich get richer at the expense of everyone else - follow the money, huge amounts of tax payers money goes in subsidies to wind power and gets siphoned into off shore accounts,
wont happen--biffo will be gone--serving his masters in brussels or china
What a great way to make even more people homeless during a time there’s a housing shortage. We’ll all mainly sell up or be joining the holiday let sector. The worst thing I ever did was vote conservative. I feel I carry some of the blame for this mess. A mistake I won’t make again.
This Govt is completely blind to the fact that this is going to cause the biggest housing crisis ever seen as LLs sell up and take their money elsewhere. The cost, and indeed the logistics, of improving much of the housing stock to EPC C is prohibitive and any tenants in older properties or with electric heating are going to find themselves homeless. The whole situation is exacerbated by an EPC assessment that is not fit for purpose, rewarding GCH over clean, green electricity and which is completely unintelligible to most people. The net gain in CO2 emissions will be negligible but the PRS will be drastically reduced with no alternative available for thousands of tenants - this is sheer madness.
While china builds more coal fired power stations and emits 37% of global emissions and rising....
Is it a bit convenient the virus came from china , the vaccine too ?? Greta never mentions them .
The western governments hell bent on a ridiculous carbon zero initiative
Join the dots ...
Aside from the lunacy the government morons are set to unleash on PRS landlords (Everyone else it seems is immune to producing CO2) the likes of Orla Shields and her idiotic in crowd, are either ignorant uneducated losers feeding off the climate hysteria movement or they are just evil. There is no climate emergency, global warming, what ever you call it, it's a scam of mega proportions sucking loads of cash from tax payers world wide. CO2 is the most important gas in our atmosphere, without which (or at only 150 parts per million, its currently just over 400 parts per million) all living things stop growing (at 150 parts per million or below.)
It's been over 8000 parts per million not too long ago, and we grew grapes in Finland etc. BUT let's not let the facts spoil a good con job. WE need more and the more we have the better all plants grow. IT doesn't heat the planet!!!!!! Did you HEAR THAT, you easily led morons looking for a cause that allows you to be an ACTIVIST, you simpletons. WE NEED CO2 and lots of it.
Do some homework and read.
So Orla Shields you utter dangerous waste of space, Foxtrot Oscar into the hole from which you emerged you woke moron and get a real job which creates something useful, improves others lives INSTEAD of DESTROYING the lives of landlords and tenants everywhere in equal measure with your pathetic pointless wee woke activist BS. Grrrrrrrrrrr I hate you and those like you grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Are you an antivax too? Although the planet's temperature does vary naturally I don't see how anyone can deny that man is causing changes to happen more quickly and the result IS climate change.
EPC C in the PRS is not going to stop this but denying it is happening does not help either!
Pretty obvious where this is heading , saves useless governments from actually building enough properties , keep up unchecked immigration ( look at the beaches recently )
Can't reach C ? we'll take the property off you ( compulsory purchase, look at the HS2 travesty and the destruction of so much beautiful forestry and Amersham and Denham etc - to save 15 minutes on a train journey ) , demolish it and replace it with government owned rabbit hutches , like in Germany where there's no PRS
And during all this debacle the government is considering a new coal mine near the lake district and a new oil field in Scotland and the new Cambridge to Oxford rail line is going to be diesel. But the PRS sector has to improve. Its just an easy win and has nothing to do with climate change and more to do with ticking a box by using EPCs which are not fit for purpose and make all sorts of assumptions - not fact - to get a grading. oh then the algorithm changes and goodbye 10 points! Do the tenants care - no they are happy to heat hot water for 23 hours a day on the highest electricity tariff and wonder why they can afford to heat the house - a true example!
We need the new coking coal mine in Cumbria to avoid importing it for our remaining steel industry.
It's also better to pipe ashore oil from Cambo than ship it in huge oil tankers.
Our reliance on these resources won't end any time soon and it's sheer hypocrisy to depend on getting them from elsewhere as the climate crisis is not national but worldwide.
If tenants had better insulation many would just open the windows and not cut their consumption.
We listen to the ignorant green lobby far too much and not to the real experts who will develop better diesel engines, hydrogen and nuclear power if given the resources we squander to appease the greens.
boris is mad? or just bad?
i blame eton and stanley
and maybe his great grandfather
These policies are heavily influenced by folk who have never left London, anyone that lives in any Town outside of the South East, will tell you that the amount of pre-war housing and indeed 60s bodge builds mean that much of the proposals are both impractical and will result in more derelict housing that blights parts of Liverpool and other areas. Take your average 2up2down terrace, most of them have limited back yard space, which is now filled with at least 3 Wheelie bins, to this you are going to add Heat Pump compressors which are ineffective below 7c - and exactly how many Winter Nights in Newcastle are a balmy 10c ?? So these homes will see their energy bills sky rocket for an inferior heating system that will have to be topped up by electric. Which brings us to the next point, in the next 10 years most new Cars will be electric, Gas heating will be phasing out, and here we are on Saturday night in late November, the weather is forecast to be -10c across large chunks of Northern Britain, There's a Big Football Match on.... And bang the already decrepit National Grid comes crashing down, old folk are left for hours with out heating as they are now all electric, no gas cooker to sit next to in the Kitchen waiting for the grid to come back up.... These people are deliberately ignoring the screamingly obvious, the money needed and the poor National Grid make this a disaster in the making both financially and in lives.
The government is taking over the National Grid. AS pointed out before CO2 is a fertiliser. The Government is creating the housing shortage by importing as many immigrants as possible, and pandering to illegal immigrants. The HOME office is probably the biggets user of the PRS by housing all these illegal immigrants in them by way of private agencies. Funny enough immigration does not add to global warming.
Smart meters , do what you’re told or we pull the plug …
Part of the EpC problem is the assessors one will grade a property c the next will call it a d. Until we have a set standard to assess from or the achieve then it will always be contentious
The EPC assessors are a huge problem.
I bought a renovation property last year that had had an EPC so it could be sold. That assessor scored it as F24. My regular assessor came round to advise on how best to get it to an acceptable standard and started by doing an assessment. He made it G14. How is it even possible for that great a difference?
Smart meters. I am an engineer and know that their is nothing smart about smart meters. Using electricity to heat anyhing is expensive, so just stop using it to heat. However, smart meters incorporate a switch, so therefore can be used to disconnect people at times of high demand whhen the wind isnt blowing.
I wouldn’t blame the assessors necessarily, some may vary like all others we have to use whether gas compliance, electrical or EPC etc, it a bit like the referee on the football park.
That’s what it’s all about …control
Post something the government don’t like and all your smart stuff will turn off one by one until you’re stuck in a glorified cave
Look up social credit score ….
Covid 19 + total population vaccination + digital currency + climate change = totalitarian control. Killing off the PRS is all part of the same plan. Research UN Agendas 21 and 2030, read Klaus Schwab's book "Covid 19 - The Great Reset" and all will be revealed. Corporate landlords and the plebs in high-rise blocks of flats - this is the plan. Think it's all conspiracy theory? It's happening to you already and it's time to wake up!
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a Conservative Government would have done all this to us this or got away with it.
Had Labour got Elected they wouldn’t be going out of their way to do us any favours but at the same time couldn’t possibly have done this unbelievable damage to us. We were sucked-in and thrown to the wolves.
I'm also surprised a conservative government would do this to us, but labour under Mr Corbyn I do think would be worse
Tories and Labour have morphed into one now , both utterly useless , inept and corrupt
May as well change their name(s) to the British Board of China , BBC for short ... hang on
It's obvious to anyone with a smidgen of intelligence that China and a load of paid off corrupt evil scumbags/politicians have got together to destroy the west without firing a single bullet
WW3 = psychological and bioweaponry warfare and it's happening now !!
Now that is just scare mongering.
Why would even the Labour Party deliberetly destrroy their own property values? I just cannot see Corbin giving up his £1,000,000 plus number in Islington.....For sure he will protect his asset.
I don't understand why new build homes don't have to have solar panels to help with the demand for green electricity.
I think it’s down to cost, the bulk of new build has to be £500k or below or they won’t sell, many obvious reasons that I won’t go into right now.
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