A council is urging landlords of eligible properties to apply for energy efficient measures such as insulation, solar panels or heat pumps.
Average funding of £18,000 is available for homeowners, and £12,000 for landlords and their tenants in the East Suffolk council area.
Warm Homes Suffolk is administered by Suffolk county council, and delivered by East Suffolk council, on behalf of all councils in the county. It has been funding home energy efficiency improvements for two years, with funding from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
To be eligible, both of these conditions must be met - Homes must have an EPC rating of D, or below; and Homes are not heated by mains gas.
And then either of the following conditions - Households have a combined pre-tax income of under £36,000 (this was previously £31,000); and homes are in a certain postcode in the county.
Once these conditions have been approved, an assessment of the home will identify which measures are best suited to the property. These will then be installed by council contactors, for free.
A council spokesperson says: “Warm Homes Suffolk has helped make improvements to 589 properties, and has meant a lot to the people and families in those homes.
“Although we’re starting to see energy prices fall, electricity and gas bills are still a cause of concern for many. But with this scheme, it can mean lower bills coupled with a healthier and warmer home to enjoy.
“While we’re starting to see warmer, lighter days, I’d urge people to plan ahead for the colder months, and let Warm Homes Suffolk make these improvements to your home.”
If you think you are eligible, or to find out more about how Warm Homes Suffolk could help you, visit www.warmhomessuffolk.org or call the team on 03456 037 686.
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I’ve wasted more than enough on this twaddle already thank you
EPC = Extremely Pointless Certificate
Oh George you're a few days late to play the April Fool !
This 'tax refund' for landlords is precisely what property investors on this forum have been calling for years. And now you criticise the Conservative government for paying to improve the quality of PRS landlords' rental units. Do you like Britain being hooked on importing gas from Norway, Qatar, Iran and Russia? We need to take back control of our nation's energy security. Using less of the expensive energy to power up our domestic and commercial buildings is a fundamental part of the plan. It's common sense.
For the last two winters we've had 8 million families living in fuel poverty (including many of the children of readers of LandlordToday).
The EPC national measurement system and the Conservative's MEES standard are fit-for-purpose. They have been helping to steadily improve the energy efficiency of the UK's building stock for the last 16 years. The EPCs on your own rental units, George, are accurate because you wouldn't have paid for them if they were not. Your EPCs contain two Grades - Running Cost AND CO2 pollution measurements. The certificates have ALWAYS informed landlords on how to lower running costs AND lower carbon emissions.
Thank goodness LandlordToday is a champion of free speech. I'm all about free speech and hearing a diversity of views.
In other words , safe and effective
Hmm… now where have i heard that one before ?
What are you on about now Gibbo...? Unless you have not noticed the purely ridiculous green measures are not fit for purpose. Now let me guide you through it.
1. To Achieve CO2 targets we must not drill fossil fuels or extract. JOB DONE
Reality is we import the stuff instead. Pure Madness and Pure Politics
2. EPC's vary from one property to another and from one assessor to another so again Pure Madness. One turns up in a bad mood and EPC graded E..?!?
3. Not one single tenant has asked me about an EPC rating across 11 properties all owned since the late 90's
4. If we had kept North Sea fields operating we too would be a beneficiary of sales like our friends in Norway, who incidentally reinvest their revenues into green projects.
You really need to give your head a shake in between getting up to the back wheels of your cannon in the Numair 3000 delxue.
Nurse he’s off his meds again
And as usual nobody but the voices in your head agrees with you
Actually Martin I do find you rather endearing in an unintentionally comedic way , keep it up , love one about choosing to pay for this certificate thing , err , didn’t you read the memo old chap ? You get fined etc if you don’t comply… if thats your idea of freedom you can keep it
😂😂😂. Well said George.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that, young man. Don’t get left behind. Don’t fail to invest back into your assets and improve the quality of your units. Lower running cost PRS houses and flats are the future and the steady transition to an All Electric UK building stock is the long term future for investors.
Read the room!
In over 20 years of letting shops and flats in prime central London not one tenant not one has ever even mentioned an epc , in fact only the solicitor and estate agents do and they all agree with me its total rubbish and a futile box ticking exercise without any real merit
Now that’s the truth. Been in this industry since 1995 and no one has ever asked or looked at an EPC. Half the assessors have decided the grade from the driveway .
All electric powered by nuclear power stations with a waste product of plutonium with a half life of 6 million years
Very ecological I must say
This is where the entire green agenda fails dismally , it’s hypocritical drivel
I notice 589 properties have been helped. I had cavity wall insulation put in Edwardian properties which immediately caused damp. Then there was the Green Deal …. Spent ages filling in forms for that and then there weren’t enough approved contractors to fulfill the orders and then the government pulled that before you could get it done. They pulled the decent FIT tariffs practically overnight because of lobbying by utility companies so solar panels stopped being cost effective for most people.
Of course we need to be less reliant on gas and oil for the environment if nothing else ….. but while people object to wind farms off Worthing and Bournemouth beaches and the national grid pays out to shareholders rather than extending the network so existing solar farms can actually link up with the grid then nothing will improve.
£2000 towards an air source heat pump is not enough
EPC on one of my rentals never even mentioned that some of the windows were single glazed …. And told me to put a jacket on a hot water cylinder that was installed last year and has an integral jacket … so I think they are incompetent too.
Ok I will get off my soap box because it’s windy up here!!
I have a property in east sufolk, little old lady 91 lived there since 1958, she could have centrol heating fitted for free, she doesn't want it, she is happy with her gas fire and plug in heaters
And she probably only heats the area she is in ….. less wasteful than heating a whole house ……. When I was young ( many many years ago) only sitting room was heated …. No kids spent hours in their bedrooms …. Was it idyllic? No there was frost inside on the bedroom windows in the mornings!!!
Green Energy cheap, Fracking bad, expensive energy.... The former apparently sells at a mythical below market price, the later at Global Market rates....
The former is only cost effective in production due to the vast subsidies.
The latter stands on its own and would be significantly below the comparable Green price if it received comparable subsidies.
Any one see the scam....
Martins gone very quiet , hope he’s alright
Perhaps he read the room for once?
Perhaps he's got better things to do George. It's a nice day out, maybe go for a walk.
Gibbo’s found a friend at last !
No doubt one of those wonderful epc assessors who are about as useful as a candy floss cement mixer
I believe James Turner is Sandra Bowes-Rennox’s alter ego. 🤔
I am my own person thanks, and it's a bit rich to be accused of using an alter ego by someone who literally chose to name themselves "annoyed landlord" 😂 you couldn't make up that stupidity!
I see that you didn't deny being an EPC assessor, James.
😂😂😂😂😂
No doubt Gibbo will have that upvote screen grabbed and mounted above his fireplace as proof he was right all along !
The paper cites an example of workers on a new home “going around the skirting boards, sealing it all with mastic and foam.” He then had to rerun tests until the home passed — only for carpet fitters to cut out all the sealant again.”
One expert tells the paper: “All they do is make the plaster wall box airtight, while the building itself is very leaky. Give me a garden shed and enough mastic, foam and plaster board and I can make it airtight . . . It’s nothing to do with making sure that they’re energy efficient. It’s to do with ticking a box.”
I rest my case
Gibbo and his alias , over to you
I would go out but it’s raining…as usual
Probably global warming and cooling and climate twaddle again
George, you are behind the times. When they discovered that ice caps were increasing along with polar bear population, they changed it from global warming to climate change! 😉 That covers everything, too wet, too dry, too hot, too cold! 🤣🤣🤣
Shocking new research shows that Energy Performance Certificates are inaccurate at best, useless at worst, and easily rigged.
A Sunday Times report over the weekend revealed the results of sophisticated and highly detailed research by a firm called CarbonLaces.
The firm claims EPCs overestimate energy use by up to 344 per cent - yet they remain a key part of current and expected legislation affecting landlords and other home owners.
CarbonLaces compared the EPCs of more than 17,000 homes with their actual use, as logged by smart meters every half hour for at least 300 days, to calculate their energy bills.
The Sunday Times reports: “The average metered gas and electricity use for all the properties studied was 125kWh per square metre a year — 91 per cent lower than what their EPCs claim (239kWh/m2/yr).
“The lower the EPC rating, the bigger the overestimation. For properties with the worst rating of G, EPCs estimate they use 656kWh/m2/yr. Yet their smart meters show they use only 151kWh/m2/yr — a 344 per cent gap.”
This inaccuracy is “quite staggering” says Madhuban Kumar, the founder of CarbonLaces.
She says EPCs overestimate not only energy use but also carbon emissions, by between 20 per cent (for EPCs rated C) and 308 per cent (for EPCs rates G).
The lengthy Sunday Times report also claims that EPCs on new build homes are open to widespread abuse.
For new homes, EPCs can be issued on design data alone. The [design] software assumes everything is perfectly fitted, but this may not always be the case.
Unlike Mr Gibbons i don't rely on childish ad hominem attacks i use cold hard logic backed up by actual facts and experience in the real world
The posts above are from an actual article posted on this site showing quite clearly how utterly ridiculous and useless the intrinsically flawed epc system actually is
I think thats enough said on the entire discussion for now , so I’m off for a nice little walk in the rain !
Well people differ they can have all the smart meters they like it’s not going to be an accurate measure of energy performance, too many other factors the number of people living in the property, their activity, their culture, some have heating high, some work from home, some don’t like much heat and have windows open, others never open them ever.
Regarding the mastic around floors boards & skirting I had that on my new built property it was more to do sound testing between rooms and fire seal rather then EPC.
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