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.”