House Buyers in Scotland Set to Be Forced to Rip Out Gas Boilers and Install Heat Pumps Within Two Years of Purchase
Scots are to be forced to rip out their gas boilers and replace them with heat pumps within as little as two years of buying a home under “hugely expensive” plans unveiled by Humza Yousaf’s Government. The Telegraph has more.
Patrick Harvie, a Scottish Green Minister, published a consultation on a new Heating in Buildings Bill aimed at drastically cutting greenhouse gases from homes and business premises.
The blueprint said people buying property should be forced to comply with a “prohibition on polluting heating” so that Scotland could reach its “interim targets” for reducing emissions by 2030.
They would have to make the switch to green forms of heating, such as heat pumps, within a “specified amount of time” following their purchase.
The main consultation document said ministers “think between two and five years is likely to be appropriate” but other assessments published alongside it said “likely two years”.
Although it said there would be no up-front costs for sellers, it admitted that there would be “impacts on the housing market”. Prices for homes with boilers could drop if buyers have to take into account the cost of installing heat pumps.
The consultation also proposed forcing homeowners to install heat pumps at other trigger points, for example by banning them from buying another boiler when their current one stops working.
In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, Mr. Harvie abandoned a previous target for a million homes to replace their boilers by 2030.
He pushed back the timescale by at least three years following warnings that hard-pressed families struggling with a cost of living crisis could not afford it.
A new minimum energy efficiency standard will instead be introduced for all properties, applying to all homes in the private rented sector by 2028 and those that are owner-occupied by 2033.
Private landlords that fail to meet the benchmark in time would be banned from leasing to a new tenant but this would not apply to councils or housing associations.
Worth reading in full.
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Good luck policing that load of old cobblers!
Note that the public sector is excused. This is a socialist attack on private property.
Mon Dieu! Quelle surprise!
“the public sector is excused.” This is deliberate. I have pointed out here on DS many times that the theft of our properties is how the Davos Deviants intend to reach the point of: “You will own nothing and be very firkin miserable.” They have landed on a perfect mechanism – household heat pumps. These useless ‘innovations’ cannot work and TPTB know this. Stage one force homeowners to install heat pumps knowing full well this is undoable for many. Some people will not be able to afford them. The tenement properties of cities such as Edinburgh simply cannot be adapted so what do the owners do? Well they might want to sell but what are the chances of laws being passed to disable the possibility of selling on the basis the properties are non-compliant? Gotcha! So, government step in and offer to buy said properties, suitably marked down of course. Government might even rent the properties back to the original owners. Nice eh? In a few swift years the property owning classes have been wiped from society. Very reminiscent of what Stalin did to the Kulaks and where did that lead? Let nobody fall for the myth that these measures have… Read more »
With this push to get people out of the countryside into cities, what will happen to all these village properties, isolated cottages and farmhouses.
Excused?! As Harvie is so convinced, the public sector should be leading by example. Let them demonstrate how it works first.
Sadly, it’s probably quite easy to police, given that property transactions need to be registered. Automatic printouts generated 2 years after transaction, policeman knocks on doors (nowhere to hide a private residence) and the power to jail and fine … and you’re away.
Sheer evil and a blatant abuse of the democratic principle.
You can justify anything in an ’emergency’…You just need to sell the emergency.
We live in a permanent state of emergency as we are at constant-war against: drugs, obesity, climate change, smoking, alcohol abuse, sugar, salt, meat, populism, inequality, poverty, discrimination, Russia.
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In France pool alarms and smoke detectors became mandatory. Documentary evidence of their installation had to be produced to the Notaire transacting the sale before any agreement could be signed.
So easy enough to police and enforce.
You can try, but it will stop the housing market dead. Where are all the imigrants to Scotland going to live? Actually there are very few (too cold!).
The saving grace of course is that no govt may bind a future one. They can be voted out and the policy obliterated.
I accept that there are no doubt many good reasons to register property transactions and loan companies probably require it. But is it a criminal offence not to register a property transaction?
The Common Good I guess this is an example of the ‘common good’ that is featured in an item in the news review. As the old saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, in the case of air source heat pumps that may be literally correct! TPTB hectoring and lecturing us all as to what we should do for the common good may be in for a rough ride when the General Public wake up to the reality of what net-zero means for home heating and car ownership and motoring. With both heating and transport the technologies they are pushing have limitations. In many housing situations, if you are going for heat pumps you may well need district heating schemes, you cannot have one heat pump per dwelling. Heating pumps are a highly technical heating solution needing well engineered, well insulated dwellings they also need a good electric supply. Being compressor motors they have a high start up current draw, you cannot just plug them in to a 3 pin socket. Our petulant politicians are petulantly demanding we achieve net-zero and petulantly demanding that the technology delivers it, just get on with it and do not… Read more »
‘Common good’ is the basis of communism as in it is done in the name of the collective for its common benefit. We should be very wary of such phrases because they can be weaponised and arguing against them can seem, to the uninitiated at least, self-interested and mean. I believe that we will be hearing this more in the years to come and it will be attempted to be used to bring in controls we can all imagine. I say attempted because I don’t believe ‘they’ will succeed.
“Practical politics is all about scaring the populace with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”. ———-Mechlen. —–Climate Change and the policies to fix it which are actually worse than the alleged problem itself is simply the latest “hobgoblin”. But isn’t it a WHOPPER? ———–I hope you are correct that they won’t succeed, because I have to live in this Socialist Republic of Scotlandia.
““Practical politics is all about scaring the populace with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”. ———-Mechlen. “
H.L. Mencken
Correct and thanks for pointing that out Gerald. ———Just kidding
Good people want to do the right thing.
Bad people tell us the wrong thing is right.
As is normal though, the ‘common good’ is only for the benefit of those who impose it.
But not the Oxford or Wales 20MPH speed limit type of “consultation”….What we have now is a veneer of democracy and if people vote the wrong way, they just plough on regardless.
‘Hot Fuzz’ anyone? 😂
Here come the socialists to seize houses under the guise of saving the planet.
This reminded me of some of the words of the final verse of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and seem very pertinent in this case:
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
It is not that different from the ‘Energy Bill’ that has been rolled back till 2035. Good old Lee Anderson denied there are any clauses in the Bill, from what I remember the Bill just needs a little tweak and it’s the same.
Note that, once again, it is proposed that CO2, a trace gas that all life on Earth depends on, is “pollution”. No mention of the real pollution of the manufacture, distribution, installation and running of equipment that is not suitable for the majority of existing housing, or the removal and disposal of existing boilers, the great majority of which will be perfectly adequate. No mention of the fact that the electricity needed to run the heat pump, as well as being something like 4 or 5 times as expensive as gas, will be produced for many years largely by burning the same gas, although part of the same ‘grand design’ will ensure that adequate amounts of electricity certainly cannot be generated, distributed and used to power existing electrical demand, charging for transportation as well as domestic heating. Particularly in cold snaps when heat pumps are least efficient but the heat most needed. Then there is the serious and genuine pollution associated with the production, installation and operation of wind turbines and solar panels. And the noise pollution of both wind turbines and heat pumps. That’s before even wondering what right have the abject clowns of the SNP to introduce such… Read more »
When I explain stuff like what you just said to friends and relatives they look at me like I am from Mars. ———-Such is the power of propaganda that you can get people to believe just about anything if you just keep repeating it and tell them that “all scientists agree”.
Indeed….where does the Magna Carta come into all of this!
Heat pumps will barely keep the houses warm when it’s freezing outside, even when running 24/7. If you combine this with rolling blackouts when the grid can’t keep up with demand and you have a recipe for disaster.
I wonder if any of these policy makers have actually lived with an air source heat pump? Do they say? Leading my example perhaps? (Hahahahahaha) I am currently in a rented 2 bedroom cottage (old and insulated by fibreglass in the loft, single glazed facing north on the front, double at the back). Oil tank replaced by an air source heat pump some years ago before my time. It’s cold, noisy and seems expensive to run. I also have a log burner, an electric blanket and infra-red heating panel on wheels to plug gaps and am fit and active. No-one talks about what happens when you ‘just want hot water’? It used to be that you could switch on your immersion coil in the hot water cylinder – extra boost for extra guests say? Family and friends staying? There was an extra switch and extra circuit you could use to prevent a cold bath/shower? This heat pump packed up earlier this summer luckily when my central heating was off – it took the engineer (only one locally who is trained to work on heat pumps and he has one day a month allocated) a couple of weeks to come and… Read more »
I can’t think of a worse place (ie the coldest) in the UK to force people to have substandard heating. And people will not only have to factor in the cost of said heat pump into the house price paid but also the necessity of ripping up all their floors after they move in and losing lots of storage space by doubling all their radiator sizes and pipe work.
Bloke in charge of main sales of heat pumps in Scotland says they will be useless there in the winter. Which is when you want them. Still, serve the Scots right for electing a Toytown political party.
They are all following Globalist policies whether north or south of the border. Some are just testing grounds it seems.
They need a sustainable solution for killing the elderly as the COVID policies were short-lived.
bullseye!
Heat pump – what a crock of sh*te! A new way to punish and penalise people, maybe get their mortgages cancelled and get them evicted. Quite why the people of Scotland are not out in their thousands demanding the heads of the so called Scottish government is beyond me. Everything the Scottish govt do is against people living decent lives in warmth and security. In fact I would say the same thing about the UK government. Nothing they do actually enriches life. It’s all little mean cuts and restrictions to save the planet and meet targets. The whole damn lot of them need to be gone. Are there any decent politicians left? I don’t think so. We are already in 1984, that much is clear, and the clocks are indeed striking 13.
A heat pump is about as useful as a fart in a pig farm
“Are there any decent politicians left”….Andrew Bridgen & Christopher Chope, Desmond Swayne.
The Scots voted for these maniacs. Not my problem.
The sooner they implement the policy the better – it will serve as a warning to the rest of the UK and the world.
As for Private landlords that fail to meet the benchmark in time would be banned from leasing to a new tenant but this would not apply to councils or housing associations: f*cking hypocrites. The public sector landlords should be first to suffer – though I pity the council tenants.
The legal private landlords are selling up and the illegal private landlords will have even more desperate people looking for property who will not dare to report any breaches in safety etc.
Alas the cost for these crazy policies is passed back to the English taxpayer when it goes tits up.
If they really want to be all electric, much cheaper to return to the past with storage heaters, electric showers and water heaters etc.
Yes, and the sooner the bill comes in the sooner Joe Bloggs might realise why more tax is being raised. This needs to happen before they start destroying the gas grid, for example. This is why I still think the sooner some part of the UK starts to properly suffer, the better – as a warning to the rest of us. I just hope they don’t get away with making the suffering ‘fair’. Storage heaters? I remember my parents ripping them out of a house we moved into – must be nearly 60 years ago. The principle is to heat up the big pile of bricks inside overnight but only open gaps in the insulation if it turns out you actually want to use the heat – otherwise leave the insulation in place slowly leaking unwanted heat into the house and rinse and repeat the next night. Bloody useless things if you want the house cool overnight (windows open overnight more or less all weather) and warm in the mornings and evenings. Heat pumps also don’t match that requirement. A trickle of heat 24hr/day – useless if you actually want temperature variation between night and day or at different times… Read more »
Is this really a surprise though? Remember it isn’t that long ago that this disgusting parasite coalition of SNP and Greens wanted to pour concrete in gas wells in a kind of scorched earth policy so no one could ever get the gas out in future. ———–I HATE the f…ing SNP. —Is that a Hate Crime?
I do hope so. Though it’s apparently OK to shout ‘Tory Scum’.
Concrete in gas wells?.. Meh. Just drill a new hole when the economy demands it.
BTW have you any idea how much CO2 is released in making concrete? Nah, me neither really, but I know it’s ‘lots’ because the UK FIRES report says we have to ban it – soon (https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/396c7356-aa92-4474-a05c-3119129832b4/content page 44)
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What these cretins fail to get is that if we are to reach NetZero, an INSANE amount of fossil fuels will be needed to get there. And when reached (ha ha ha ha) an insane amount of fossil fuels as backup, to avoids grid collapse.
They might not be that stupid, if they’ve got shares in the relevant companies, though!
Eco cretins———I like that. How about “Disgusting Squirming Eco parasite commie UN lackeys that would not know how to explain energy or climate to a 3 year old”
Hmm. Maybe something a bit more… snappy?
Have an up-tick.
We have the pleasure of Rammed Earth houses!
Storage heaters?
[…]
The principle is to heat up the big pile of bricks inside overnight but only open gaps in the insulation if it turns out you actually want to use the heat – otherwise leave the insulation in place slowly leaking unwanted heat into the house and rinse and repeat the next night. Bloody useless things if you want the house cool overnight (windows open overnight more or less all weather) and warm in the mornings and evenings.
The flat I live in has three of these fitted and I haven’t turned the overnight part on for years as it’s completely useless for maintaining habitable temperatures during day and evening (and with habitable, I mean something like feet not getting so cold that they hurt — occasionally chattering teeth considered acceptable).
I got storage heaters that i hardly use, wood burner and a timer heater in the bedroom that I can control.
The CO2 commitments which underlie all these new restrictions were passed in a surreptitious, underhanded way years ago, away from public gaze or scrutiny.
It doesn’t matter who gets voted in. They will be bound to do the exact same things by these established laws.
I don’t see anyone anywhere rolling back these commitments. Sunak? Don’t think so…
Mrs May Agenda 2030 also referred to as Net 0. I wonder what the current surprise the current PM will leave us as a parting gesture.
None that I know voted for them.
I wouldn’t bet against it coming to England once Starmer is PM.
It seems there are objectives but how each government achieves it is up to them. This was very clear with COVID.
Sadly, I think that is a roaring cert tof.
Wales and Scotland are examples of what we would get in England under Labour. They had extra covid restrictions, the Scots govt are leading the way in restricting freedom of speech, the Welsh govt want everyone to drive slowly
Two thirds of people living in Scotland did not vote for them. People need to come together and vote these evil cretins out.
Many people in Scotland wielding power aren’t Scottish at all. It pisses me off beyond belief what these numpties are doing to a truly beautiful country. The same goes for the other parts of the UK too.
More SNP insanity! Come on Scot’s get rid of these foreign nut jobs!
Unfortunately there are just enough people that think joining the EU means independence and have yet to realise how little regard the SNP has for Scots.
Choices are limited: SNP – fast track to Communism, Labour – fast track to Communism, Conservative – slow road to Communism.
As with anywhere else, other parties won’t get far as they are not aligned with Other Interests.
Yep you nailed it————–The end result is eco communism and I am not sure what percentage of people about to buy a house even look into stuff like this. It also will affect everyone who is selling their parents house as well , and ofcourse the SNP commies and their RED partners masquerading as GREENS crave skimming money from everyone that owns something because they think they should own it. —-These parasites even think they should own your children
They tried owning the children a few years ago with the Named Person Bill but it was blocked by a court ruling.
As with ‘Independence’ and Euthanasia, if at first you don’t succeed..
Wake up people. —Scots are not daft. Do they not see what is going here? They are being dictated to by their totalitarian SNP/Green communist pincer movement that pretends it is “saving the planet” but is actually just an insidious bunch of UN lackeys that will leave Scots who live in the very coldest part of the UK without the means to properly heat their home by removing the best central heating system (gas) that they ever had. As the SNP drop in popularity and Labour may once again become the main party in Scotland, Scots may be saved from this phony planet saving impoverishment. I never thought I would ever be looking to the Labour party to save me from tyranny, but that is how it is panning out.
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
I am getting close to obtaining a big pile of automatic weapons to defend my home (Castle!). Look at the riots in France, Scotland and Ireland. We the majority need the ability to defend ourselves from the communist terrorists. That is exactly what out Government everywhere is becoming.
Norway and Sweden are always used as a reference point to show how 80%of all theirs housing uses some form of heat pump heating! That’s because these countries have to live with very cold conditions and have ALWAYS highly insulated their housing from the get go!
Not so in most European countries where this heating requires massive, and mainly non vaible, insulation upgrades!
You have forgotten the most important point about Norway, they have very cheap hydro-electricity. They can heat more cheaply than gas, but we have virtually no hydro. Surely our useless “representitives” have realised this? Our electricity comes from gas at an efficiency of 40% compared with a straight gas boiler. They haven’t understood this either! Is a PPE degree, even some fraction, a study of real economics? Aparently they ignored that bit as being too difficult!
Don’t the Scots keep voting for the SNP no matter how much their policies immoderate and impoverish them?
They must like it.
In the same way every Western population ‘votes’ and gets a government that works for someone else.
Not in the Netherlands.
Yes, they have noticed what is happening, and are doing something about it! Vote Reform, the Uni-party members are all part of the “brown envelopes” conspiracy. I love the way the UAE are treating COP28, just the way all the others have for the last 27 years. Give me the money! However the BBC noticed and don’t like the publicity for their total propaganda about the Climate.
At least there’s somewhere more meaningful to go to protest for groups like JSO.
It is interesting to note that if they do this there will be no electricity to run them. That is the question to ask the idiots in Government in Scotland, “Where exactly will the electricity to run these 24/7, come from?” Even a 3kW HP (which is a tiny capacity without massive insulation installation) is 3 TIMES the available electricity supply for most homes, on a continuous basis. Every town road in Scotland to be ripped up, because that is needed (Along with an infinite number of wind turbines of course) to implement this policy. It is impossible for this “Policy” to ever happen, unless most of the population actually have NO heating or hot water. In fact homes will be like caves, with no fires of course!
Like forcing Scots to eat healthy. 😁 Paid for by English taxpayer no doubt.