Government consultation exposes unintended consequences of EPC reforms

The government are really stupid.
I am not going to spend say £10k without increasing the rent. Sadly for the tenants I will need to dramatically increase the rent in order to save them a few pounds on their energy bills.

Plain stupidity.

See this blog post I wrote lat year looking at the break even analysis of improvements for what remains of my portfolio
https://think-we-are-stupid.blogspot.com/2025/02/energy-performance-of-privately-rent.html

When you mention “Government” in the conversation then you know your talking about the Labour Communist Muppets in Parliament and the dictator of 10 Clowning Street. Landlords in the main have common sense and business knowledge which unfortunately this government will never have. I’m glad they’ve extended the EPC changes to 2030. It now gives me extra time to save a pot of cash to sell up just before they come into force to achieve a minimum “C” EPC rating. There’s no way I’m spending thousands of pounds on properties knowing it’s Russian roulette whether they reach a “C” EPC rating or not. I will take the CGT and legal expenses hit on selling up which will be a lot lower than the upgrade costs to my rental properties. I have a life to live and a family to care for and they come first before any stupid government ideology rant, especially from this useless one who are squatting in parliament and masquerading as a sensible government…… They are an utter joke!

My video to Ed on this a year ago when he announced all tenants houses will be upgraded whether they like it or not.
https://youtu.be/ijMxRyuCGKI?si=v10mmKfqpTqRZPLL

Also why is not anyone on the news when they mentioning this botched insulation, that is a result of people wanting warmer houses, lower EPC’s.
Now Ed calling for it again, there will be millions more with botched insulation in 5 years time.
You cannot retrospectively fit older houses without some side effects.
Older houses by the way that already have new boiler, kitchen, windows, doors, tenant very happy & paying £100+ below market rent-What do u think is going to happen to those rents who are paying cheap rent?
Have u been to ask them what they want in THIER HOMES OF 20 YEARS?

I have a second business dealing in property renovations. We have just completely gutted and renovated an older bungalow as it was fire damaged.
It’s a double skin brick construction with no gap between the bricks so it has 50mm of insulation applied externally then 20mm of rendering. It has 450mm of loft insulation, brand new double glazed windows and doors throughout, a new gas combination boiler and low energy lighting in every fixed point.
It has just received a C rating with 69 points.
For those of you who don’t know it is 1 point into the C rating.
I appreciate it’s an older building, but it sits on a road with about 100 identical bungalows and about 60% are still council owned. Most that have a live EPC are either D or E.
A significant number without an EPC are still council owned.
How is it that no one in power seems to see this tsunami sized problem rapidly crashing down on us.
If you own a house build pre 1980’s you are either facing a huge bill or you’ll have to sell.
Now ask yourself when most council houses were built.

I wonder where they get all these statistics from, how reliable they are and how much has it cost the taxpayer for this information.Yes some of my tenants will pay extra rent and some can afford to but others may just find somewhere cheaper especially as so many people work from home.
If this forces more landlords out it’s another win for the government and if they stay no doubt rent caps or some other disincentive will be introduced.
Never mind the minimal savings in heat bills for tenants, what about the increased risk of property fabric damage , increased damp and mould when these dubious insulation methods are applied, but of course the government doesn’t care about that as long as they reach these ridiculous EPC ratings.The landlord will be left to sort that out and pay the fines, while his property is unsaleable.

Reply to the comment left by Martin at 23/01/2026 – 10:20
Wow, you were very lucky to achieve the C EPC rating by just one point. How would you have felt after spending all that money and not to achieve a C EPC rating? That’s the dilemma that landlords are faced with, debts for loans on improvements which either will or will not improve a rental property upto a C EPC rating. It’s a frightening scenario.

Reply to the comment left by Suspicious Steve at 23/01/2026 – 04:38
the biggest exemption will be a big fat ‘no’ from tenants when presented with the ‘savings’ over the rent increase amount.

Any ‘savings’ can only be looked at when you know the price of gas/elec at the time (who the hell knows what that will be in 4 years from now) and what the tenant actually consumes. AI states – The average annual energy cost for a typical 3-bedroom house in the UK (medium usage, 2-3 people) is approximately £1,700 – £1,850 as of late 2025. This generally breaks down to around £140 – £155 per month for dual fuel (gas and electricity).

The cost of £10k over 7 year payback/12 = £119 a month.

So a hell of a lot of upheaval, and a POSSIBLE ‘saving’ to the tenant of £31.

Oh yes – one more thing…show me one tenant that currently even uses the ‘average’ amount of energy now according to their existing EPC!

Cost of living means EVERYONE cuts energy costs…..by using as little as possible so no where near what they should be using to keep a property adequately in the first place.

The government HAVE to focus on energy security and bringing the cost of energy down first before any of this makes any sense.

how can there NOT be any ‘unintended consequences’?

Either the rent is increased to account for the mandated works, or the LL sells up to a private occupier and the property falls straight out of the demanded C requirement.

All to achieve a NZ wet dream.

They need desperately to have a review of the renters rights act. All that is available for most benefits claimants in birmingham is now supported living. People are now been told when they enter that they are not allowed to work. I know of cases where people have finally got a job to receive a phone call from provider after the first day telling them to give up the job or move out in 3 days.
I had 2 lads begging me for cash in hand work yesterday as they were in supported living sp not allowed to work.
Add to that I live near a big university in birmingham, most people who were doing student housing have run a mile and passed the house o er to supported living.
You now have young vulnerable 18 year old girls, first time living alone, going out with friends and having to run the gauntlet of getting home whilst the whole area has turned into a drug ridden dump with all the undesirables that that brings

Unlike appliance rating labels, EPC scores are relative, not absolute.

That’s how a five bedroom detached house and a studio apartment in a block of flats can share the same score, when obviously their energy losses will differ.

In the first case, upgrading from D to C could represent quite a bit of energy. Doing the same with the studio however is likely to make a much smaller difference (which actually may well fail the cost-benefit analysis routinely applied to government expenditure).

All of which assumes that the calibration system itself is reliable. But in reality, it is based on a series of presumptions about structures, human behaviour and hypothetical savings.

For example, the energy performance of modern composite or engineered wood floor coverings is assumed to be the same as old-fashioned, gappy floorboards. In reality the insulation is superior to most carpets – which are given a higher score.

Hot water cylinders automatically lose points, whether they have a cold-to-the-touch epoxy resin coating or an ill-fitting jacket, while a solid brick perimeter wall is considered ‘very poor’. A plug-in free-standing electric room heater loses points, but the same unit fixed to the wall and hard-wired to a fused outlet doesn’t.

The algorithm is secret, so it is impossible to challenge the weight accorded to individual parameters. The daily hours of occupancy are yet another guess, as are the tenants’ preferred room temperatures and their diligence in switching off unrequired heat and light.

Yet the EPC score, which began life as a friendly nudge for everybody to ‘do their bit’, has now been weaponised against private rentals. Unsurprisingly, the government has let itself off the hook with student Halls of Residence, as they are ‘not considered self-contained dwellings’.

Given that the estimated average UK-wide EPC is D, and the impossibility of bringing the entire privately-rented portion up to C in four years, expect some tweaks to the algorithm to enable government to declare a policy victory in October 2030.