When it Comes to Energy Performance Certificates, Landlords Just Can’t Win
Just imagine, as a Daily Sceptic reader, temporarily going insane and buying into the rental market. Next, imagine going even more insane and pouring your savings (or increasing your mortgage) into trying to kit out your rental properties so that they gain the highest possible Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in a nod to the U.K.’s fixation at pouring astronomical sums down the eco plughole. You’d soon wish you’d never been born
That’s what the Telegraph’s Secret Landlord has done, but came a cropper when trying to improve a Victorian flat:
At great expense, I’ve carried out internal wall insulation and upgraded the electric storage heaters in my one-bedroom Victorian flat (I’d already fitted double glazing years ago).
There’s no gas and, given it’s a flat, no way to do something fancy with solar panels or heat pumps, so I elected to purchase two high heat retention storage heaters, which cost £2,500 with the installation.
I chose these top of the range models because I was assured they would help me achieve the hallowed EPC ‘C’ rating, which rented properties are required to have by 2030, up from the current grade ‘E’.
The assessor had already told me I only needed one heater to improve the score, but as I also wanted to improve the quality of a tenant’s life, I bought an extra – rather than a panel heater, which I could have done without lowering the EPC rating.
Having also installed lovely wooden flooring, I called the assessor and asked him to revisit the property. I still had a couple of years left on the old certificate, but wanted to get it done now to show potential tenants the new enhanced ratings.
Imagine my surprise when the certificate came back with a ‘D’, just one grade higher than it was previously.
Cue angry phone call.
“I did what you said, why have I not got a ‘C’?”
“You didn’t install 50mm insulation under the floor.”
“But it’s got floorboards, plyboard, insulated underlay and then wood flooring – surely that’s enough?”
“I’m sorry, Secret Landlord, you needed to insulate under the floor.”
“But,” I said, “I’ve been doing research on this and I worry it may rot the joists, there’s a fear it may breach the damp proof course and cause other issues.”
“They don’t care about that on the EPC.”
“So, what am I going to do?”
“I suggest you either rip up the floor and insulate, or accept the ‘D’. They’re changing the software in January, so you may be better off just doing it now.”
“Sorry, what?” I exclaimed.
At this point the conversation moves from the absurd to a Kafkaesque nightmare. The assessor continued:
“Yes, from January we have to measure all the windows, say what direction they’re facing and list the age. Electric heating will also potentially get downgraded because the new update includes heating costs and electric is more expensive to run. To be honest, I don’t understand why the Government is pushing heat pumps because having them could potentially lose you up to 11 points.”
“OK, so you’re essentially saying we’re having a window tax by the back door and the electric revolution they’re pushing is going to penalise me?”
“It’s a mess. The new tests will take double the time so the costs of an EPC will go up, I also wouldn’t be surprised if many assessors quit – loads left during the Green Deal.”
“OK,” I said, reeling from this new information. “What is it I should do?”
“Well, if you lower the ceiling by 400mm that will give you three extra points, you do have very high ceilings.”
Cue insane laughter. So insane, the assessor had to cut across my guffaws.
“But honestly, I don’t think the Government will stick to the ‘C’ grade, I think they’ll lower it to ‘D’. Also, they may drop that metric altogether as it’s measuring the wrong thing – it’s not in line with carbon reduction, and that’s what they’re trying to do.”
The Secret Landlord is thus left thousands out of pocket chasing an EPC rating being carried as fast as possible up the pitch attached to a pair of goalposts operated by mutating software. Even heat pumps turn out to be a liability.
The EPC is exposed as a pointless farce. The Conservative government proposed a £10,000 (previously £3,500) cap on landlords’ spending on an EPC upgrade. If that spending wasn’t successful in improving a landlord’s EPC rating, he or she could apply for an exemption. But the Telegraph points out that in almost every instance the real cost of ‘improving’ a property is far higher than 10 grand – in some cases almost four times. Difficult to imagine how you’d ever get the money back.
Worth reading in full.
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I used to have a sideline producing EPCs for commercial buildings. I didn’t bother with domestic. As I was producing these things, I said to myself that they were a waste of time and money. No prospective commercial tenant is going to care what the EPC rating is if the building suits their needs. From a tenant’s position, they are pointless.
I’m planning on moving house next year, if all goes according to plan. If I find the house that I want, I am not going to give a toss what the EPC rating is. I will make some reasonable, sensible upgrades where possible, but that will be it.
These EPCs are *clearly* not about energy efficiency. There’s something else going on…
There was a proposal a while ago that not only would you not be allowed to rent out a property below a certain EPC rating, but that you might not even be allowed to sell it!
The EPC is exposed as a pointless farce.
That depends on what you think the intention of EPCs is. If the intention is “to save the world”, then EPCs are nonsense. However, if the intention is to drive small-scale landlords out of the rental market, and to facilitate the takeover of that market by transnational corporations, then EPCs are doing their job.
Keep in mind that 2TK is a globalist WEFbot and devotee of the Trilateral Commission.
This government hates one man bands, small businesses, and medium sized businesses. They cannot abide independence of any sort. They prefer to deal with large organisations, with whom they can cut deals. Large organisations offer opportunities for unionisation, but also a type of collectivisation, making it easier to control the workers.
Of course the EOCs are a Kafkaesque nightmare. A long time ago I paid some ‘EPC Assessor’ to produce an EPC on a commercial property to be rented out. As an engineer, I had previously tried to establish how to calculate the rating in terms of W/m2/degC. It should not be particularly difficult. I could not find any methodology in the public domain supporting EPCs nor could I find any definition of what each Energy band meant numerically. The ‘recently qualified’ EPC assessor, who was not in a rush as he did not have another sucker booked that day, was happy to let me input multiple inputs into his laptop and observe the result. I realised that the whole thing bore little relationship to physics and is simply another establishment control scam. The software, the assessor ‘qualification’ and the certificate itself. The article exposes the scam where government software is interfered with to provide a different result for political purposes. Which includes the elimination of private landlords.
I have a good friend who has recently retired from the architectural practice he’d built up with a friend.
He has been telling me for years that the UK’s EPC system is a bad joke.
The system the Germans use is apparently technically far more rational.
One of his last big commissions was the design and project management of a street of new “passive houses” in a big British city. He was and remains proud of how the pioneering project worked out, although concerned about the challenges encountered and the costs.
When discussing the outcome with the developer and the Local Authority, he pointed out that to achieve the desired energy efficiency, the tenants would need a simple handbook to tell them how best to live in their house.
If feeling a bit warm, they obviously shouldn’t just open a window!
“Well, don’t worry about that!” he was told. All the properties had been let, now, and there wasn’t even one Tennant who spoke reasonable English!
Who would have thought?
Ah, yes, the eco Holy Grail of Grade C!
In fact, it’s not so much a Holy Grail as a carrot held on a stick in front of the nose of the poor landlord who is being treated by successive governments as a donkey.
But that’s life under Greenery.
Nevertheless, it’s a DGT (Damn Good Thing as those who’ve read their ‘1066 And All That’ will know) because for the several tens of thousands of houses and buildings being sold at any one time it’s ker-ching for the Chancellor who picks up the 20%VAT.
Money for old Green rope!
I have a BtL (owned outright) 2-bed house in the west country. It has a D certificate which applied when I bought the house and since then I have replaced the old, inefficient storage heaters with modern programmable electric radiators. I did that before the Gov moved the goalposts with the C rating required from 2030.
I’ve upgraded the loft insulation from 100mm to 300mm. It’s double-glazed. The only thing I could still cheaply do is replace some of the lightbulbs/light fittings.
It doesn’t generate enough rent to justify spending £tens of thousands trying to hit a C so I won’t be doing it. It will be sold in 2028.
So that’s where all the green jobs are coming from. Sorted, respect due.
Energy Policy that takes away affordable reliable energy under the guise of a planetary emergency is so utterly absurd that energy will become so scarce the government finds itself having to stuff every crevice with foam and have all our energy use monitored and rationed via the smart meter. They will have pricing based on how available energy is ie. if the wind happens to be blowing, in order to discourage use at the busiest times. —-Is this what it has come to now in the 21st century? How utterly pathetic.—-This NET ZERO eco socialism will collapse under the weight of it’s own absurdity. Trump arrived to put a huge spanner in the works and the German Green dumb government has just collapsed. —-You cannot defeat REALITY, and the reality is that the world needs energy and the wind and sun cannot provide it
Wind and sun do provide energy but not in ways we can use immediately. There are a few chemical transitions required before the energy is usable by mankind. It’s a right faff. Kneel should be lodging a complaint with God.
but not in ways we can use immediately”
Especially with all these Wars they want to involve us in. Speaking of Wars, TPTV (Talking Pictures channel, mostly dedicated to older films and documentaries, love it) was covering WW1 last night with a Battlefield Historian talking about the Christmas event where both sides laid down their arms and had a game of footy and shared some drinks. Shame they didn’t carry on that trend beyond that Christmas moment when you consider some Duke was shot. All Wars are Bankers Wars.
They provide energy. But NOT on demand energy. They are part time energy that cannot provide base load and are only any good if there is STORAGE. —-The current state of storage is that it doesn’t exist a grid level unless you want to pay 20 times more than the actual energy is worth in the first place.—-People get mixed up between solar for their roof and solar for the grid. —-These are two different things. ——Keep up the good work Huxley. We must all keep up the pressure on Miliband the eco fantasist that is costing us all an arm and a leg under the false pretences of a climate crisis.
I have first hand experience of the ber rating here in ireland and how its operated
The apt we owned was one of 15 in the same building of three floors, rated D but the identical apt below ours was rated B1,same apt on a different floor with no extra refurbishment for windows, insulation etc
But two different ber assessor’s!
Go figure 🤔
So secret landlord is doing his best for both his tenants and the fake environment scam to offer a good quality property. How much of this do we think that scumbag socialist slumlord has done to his rental properties that were apparently dripping in condensation and covered in mold. I would suggest nothing like it, he’ll just sit happily on the Labour benches voting through the legislation that he chooses to ignore.
To be fair, he was using an agency to oversee the running of the rental property. So they were not doing their job to inform the Landlord of the conditions. I had some tenants move out, and they moved out a large cupboard with them! The agency was supposed to photograph every room and inspect on a regular basis.
My flat, a spacious slum dwelling, has solid concrete flors. no possibility of putting insulation under them. Should I worry?
Sounds like the best course for Secret Landlord would be to gain an EPC Inspectors rating then he can do his own inspections.
EPCs will ensure that would-be renters, who would prefer a cold flat than no place at all, will have nowhere to go.