Landlords Call for a change to EPCs

The National Residential Landlords Association is calling for a change to EPCs. They are backing a report by MP’s that says the EPC evaluation is out of date and there are better measures to measure the energy efficiency of homes.

The current system has every property rated on a scale of A to G. This must be shown to purchasers of a properties and also to potential tenants of a rented property.

Rental properties have to achieve a rating of E or higher and currently the government plans to increase this to a minimum of a C rating for all new tenancies from 2025 and expanding to existing tenancies from 2028.

This could cause a wealth of problems in the rental sector, especially for larger properties and HMO’s. EPC’s have been described as outdated and fail to fully account for modern low carbon heating and other measures.

In the report by the all-party Environmental Audit Committee, they suggest replacing the current EPC Rating System with Building Renovation Passports using an approved standardised methodology.

This would allow landlords to have a clearer idea of what measures they would need to undertake in order to achieve the efficiency standards required.

The committee report also states that the government look to have underestimated the costs to hit the carbon target on homes by 2050. It could potentially cost an extra £65 billion.

Currently 19 million UK properties need energy efficiency upgrades to meet EPC band C and this could cost on average £18k per property.

The report calls on the government to set out how energy efficiency improvements can be achieved in properties in a cost effective, practical and affordable way.

It also says that schemes such as Home Upgrade Grants, Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund and phase two of the Green Homes Grant Local Authority Delivery Scheme to be fully funded and rolled out.

And the social rented sector should be subject to the same standards as the private rented sector which has long been a bone of contention.

This could have a huge effect on Landlords in the private rented sector, especially those with larger properties as some of the potential costs could be eye watering.

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