Think tank blasts landlords for not paying for better insulation

Within my group of domestic and commercial landlord associates, everyone of us has taken action to invest back into our rental units to improve energy efficiency and drive down energy running costs for tenants. You would have to be an incredibly stupid landlord to have failed to do this. I have no idea where SMF have got their data. Improving your asset's EPC is basic as investing back into say installing a new kitchen, ensuring guttering is repaired, repointing brickwork or fitting in a fresh bathroom. Ensuring a rental unit is well insulated and has modern/efficient building services improves rents, yields, long term value and reduces borrowing costs. I've already got my domestic rental stock to EPC Grade C and the plan/finance in place to get the commercial units up to EPC Grade B within the next couple of years. I have no idea who these '60% of landlords' are that SMF are banging on about but they must be fools. Slowly but surely they are having their wealth removed from them by legislation and the market.

The think tank needs to do some more thinking. They don’t seem to understand that firstly only the government is obsessed with net zero, the sane amongst us understand it will only make us all poor for a negligible affect on the environment. Also they don’t seem to have thought through (not sure why they called a think tank) that landlords will not be interested in spending thousands on insulation for the property because the government has leeched away most of the profit from renting out properties - so why would they want to then spend that to satisfy a goalpost moving agenda?
Thirdly they don’t seem at all bothered about government properties, or privately owned properties - think tank? They clearly went into this research knowing roughly what the outcome would be and the spin they would then put on the, ahem, “results”.

Perhaps when the EPC assessment is a fair, clear & true reflection of a properties energy efficiency & the recommendations are sensible & affordable LLs will begin to take action.

Perhaps when all housing stock have to achieve the same standards LLs will not feel they are being unfairly picked on.

Perhaps when the Govt & LAs stop picking money from LLs pockets there will be some left over to pay for improvements.

Perhaps pigs will fly!

When your EPC "consultant"? recommends work costing over £30,000 to reduce your property from a D to a C for an energy saving of £100 PA. Why would you bother with this madness. I just sold it instead.

I'm busy doing what I can as and when like upgrading loft insulation whenever I'm doing other work in order to minimise disruption. But If and when the legislation comes in, I will sell any properties that can't be reasonably upgraded.
I suspect in several years' time government will realise at the 11th hour that they will have to step in with massive support so that landlords don't have to sell up and evict en masse. Except it will probably be too late for many.

Insulation has often been installed by cowboys and can cause damp problems.
I own an ex Council maisonette that the council installed fibre cavity wall insulation in before I bought it. That building has a water ingress problem, the insulation is wringing wet and damp seeps through into the lounge. It's on a program to have it removed and replaced with bead type insulation but there are thousands of properties on that list and they have recently told me mine is several years away. So it looks like I'm going to have to either hack off the plaster and tank the room or pvc clad it. Either way it's a chunky expense only incurred because the freeholder installed the wrong insulation.

I have had loft and cavity wall insulation installed under grant schemes and in both cases have been left with a completely fictious EPCs much lower than it should be. In order for the companies to claim payment under the scheme they have churned out fraudulent EPCs up to 10 points below the previous one (E47 instead of the previous D57 in one case). Then they don't issue a correct one after the work is done.
They also didn't fully do the work they were supposed to do. One property was supposed to have loft and cavity wall insulation but when they turned up the installation team decided there weren't enough cavity walls to make it worth setting up their equipment so only did the loft. The other one did the walls but decided there wasn't enough loft to bother with, so I finished up doing that one myself. So you pay the grant contribution and only get half the work done.
There's currently no reason for me to pay for a proper assessor to issue a correct EPC on one of those properties so it can stay as being registered as an E for another 2 years. How many hundreds of thousands of properties currently have completely wrong EPC scores registered? Either accidentally because the assessors abilities vary or downright fraudulently because of how the insulation grant schemes worked?

Other types of insulation such as underfloor or flat roof insulation have almost never been encompassed by the grant schemes. I hate to think how much Celotex I've bought over the years to insulate flat roofs or to use internally with suspended ceilings.

The environmental lobby have missed one big thing (in my eyes) at least with most student rentals -these are now rented bills inclusive which means alot of student tenants leave lights on, put the heating up really high all the time whilst windows are open etc. I don't think it matter how much you triple glaze and insulate walls and roofs whilst these all inclusive deals result in tenants wasting energy through this type of negligence.

Is think tank Cockney rhyming slang ?