Tenant group claims landlords can easily afford EPC upgrades

So the so called self elected tenants champion are not concerned about the rights of social and council tenants then as these housing groups are exempt from the proposals and we don’t hear anything from Gen Rent about that. They also need to state the so called ‘data’ that they use to ‘substantiate’ their flawed claims otherwise making it up as they go along comes to mind.

Clearly Mr Wilson at generation rent failed basic maths at school.

My average rent is £650 per month. So that’s revenue of £7,800 per year. Ignoring the fact that I have costs, overheads and of course the big one TAXES to pay, I would need to spend £15,000 per property (probably every 5 years) to achieve C.

My typical EPC is currently D (might be worse with the new EPC measurement method).

All the improvements are big ticket items like Solar PV, external wall insulation, digging up the floor to install under floor insulation. All the easy things like double glazing, energy efficient boilers etc have been done. Break-even on these items is beyond my lifetime.

So basically Mr Wilson is numerically illiterate to think I can afford to pay 2 years worth of income every 5 years until I achieve C.

There is no tax relief on this CAPITAL expenditure. I will still be taxed on this rental income despite making a huge loss in real terms.

Given this week it has become clear that Rachel is also incapable of basic maths and the real state of the economy came as a shock to her, then Mr Wilson should be lobbying Rachel to spend £45 BILLION upgrading the cold damp council accomodation to C as well. Currently councils and social housing dont even need to achieve E. An extra £45 BILLION is in the noise on top of the £190 BILLION she wants to spend and the extra £8 BILLION a year in debt servicing costs so she might as well go all in.

Maybe Mr Wilson should sign my petition on the government to commit £45 BILLION upgrading the woefully poor state of council and social housing.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/718910

Of course you can sign it too without being numerically illiterate.

Reply to the comment left by Suspicious Steve at 13/06/2025 – 07:50
Having looked into Mr Wilson’s grant claim that grants are available to landlords well any grants are treated as income under S105 Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005 and S102 Corporation Tax Act 2009 (see BIM40465) so would be subject to yet more TAX.

We’ve looked at moving from band D to C. It’s tens of thousands, not thousands.

Technically he’s not wrong.
We’ve known about this for years and I for one have been steadily increasing my rents significantly in order to build up a sinking fund for these improvements. Now it turns out that the local authority will fund £15k on my first property and £10k on my others.

….that coming from the backdrop that shows the government itself can’t even produce a coherent set of accounts and plans….

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 13/06/2025 – 10:08
If it is more than £15k, you won’t have to do it.
If it is less than £15k, there is government funding available for the full amount.

Reply to the comment left by Suspicious Steve at 13/06/2025 – 08:17
Where on earth did you get that from?
Under the scheme you don’t receive money, the council simply carries out the required upgrades for free.

Gen Rant simply opens their mouth to change feet. Each protestation and ‘demand’ made shows that they clearly have no idea of costs/ low profit margins/compliance etc issues for LLs. All whilst the current EPC algorithms are geared to cost saving whilst supposedly aiming to achieve net zero. They need a course on basic economics and common sense.

Reply to the comment left by Steve Rose at 13/06/2025 – 10:12
And what do you have to do to be eligible now? Is it only for tenants on low incomes?