Three-quarters of landlords welcome the government’s decision in the autumn to scrap the proposal that all rental property must have an Energy Performance Certificate rating of at least C by 2028.
The findings are in a Landbay landlord survey, which highlights a change in attitude towards making energy efficiency upgrades to properties. Slightly fewer landlords intend to make changes if it is not a legal requirement.
More than six out of 10 landlords with lower rated property intend to upgrade to a C rating. Of these, 42 per cent said they would make changes at some point in the future and 20 per cent intend to upgrade as soon as possible.
A quarter said they will only make changes if legislation requires them to in the future, while 13 per cent won’t do anything.
Compare this to before the EPC minimum requirement was scrapped, when 73 per cent of landlords said they intended to bring property up to a C rating. Within this, 39 per cent would wait until nearer the previously proposed 2028 deadline and 34 per cent planned to do so sooner.
The expense and difficulty of retro-fitting older properties is seen as the main barrier by landlords to upgrading property to meet the EPC C standard.
On the other hand, one in four landlords were not in favour of the removal of the EPC minimum requirements. They support the need for energy efficient housing as a social and environmental duty, so felt landlords should be improving the ratings on their property.
Rob Stanton, business development director at Landbay, says: “We applaud the sentiment around trying to improve the energy efficiency of buildings but we also need to be realistic. The UK has a vast amount of older housing that is difficult to retro-fit and will be expensive.
“Some landlords said they would be encouraged to update their property if there was more government help such as easy accessibility to grants. Over half of rental properties in the UK are D rated or lower so landlords now have some breathing space to plan without a looming deadline.”
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Labour have already intimated that they’re going to reverse this decision 🤷♂️ All we have had is a small “ Breathing Space”, 😄 did you see what I did then… breathing space 🤐
A very large number of landlords are not prepared to let indefinitely, and therefore Energy performance ratings, methods to eradicate mould etc are all irrelevant.
Landlords have had no representation at all during the "rental reform" process and therefore are not on board with it.
Followed by suffocating.
Even if they had carried on with the EPC most landlords had no idea what to do because they keep changing and not for the better.
Last week there was an article that proposed changes to the whole EPC system so what chances have landlords got? If I need to spend 15k on improvements, that is fine however if six months later it changes again why would I do it.
Clear guidelines that are not going to change would be a start but when we have had a dozen housing ministers in the last ten years that seems a bit optimistic to expect that to happen.
Maybe next time Beadles About on his Christmas P*ss Up with Gove he can mention this...! Optimistic to expect this too.
None of it has any credibility that's why LL aren't bothering. You can not get any consistent sensible advice, you look at the EPC measures and it might say low energy lighting ok I can do that, then solid floor insulation - no I'm not spending silly money and evicting the tenant for a £100 saving, then it'll say Thermostatic valves on radiators ok can do that, but it doesn't tell you how many points these measures individually give you as they aren't in an ascending order that makes any sense. If it started off with a sensible point system out of a hundred and then awarded points for each measure it would make more sense. So house is rated 45/100 needs to be say 60/100 so solid floor worth 20 points, light bulbs worth 5 points, Radiator Valves worth 15 points....so simple I can see that bulbs + rads is enough and I don't need to kick tenants out and dig up a concrete floor...
EPC has very little impact on heating bills.
November gas bills for:
2 person EPC A house £150 (my home)
3 person EPC C house £83
6 person EPC E HMO £118
5 person EPC C student HMO £103
4 person EPC C HMO £96
4 person EPC B HMO £125
5 person EPC C HMO £82
4 person EPC C student house £117
The cheapest 2 and the most expensive are all detached.
The others are all 3 storey terraced houses.
Mine has underfloor heating and 4 heating zones. The others are all conventional gas central heating systems, some with combi boilers others with hot water cylinders.
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