Tenant organisation criticises £15k EPC cost cap and calls for two-year rent freeze

Reply to the comment left by Ryan Stevens at 16/04/2025 – 12:18
They don’t care. They especially don’t care if a landlord who is unable to upgrade his property is fined heavily.

Unless obtaining an exemption is straightforward and speedy, many landlords will not risk getting caught out and being fined. They will sell and will have to evict their tenants on that ground.

Massive own goal, Shelter and ACORN! The tenants won’t have to pay that extra £250 a year. They can pay £3000 a year more to find alternative accommodation. If they haven’t go the money they may become homeless.

I rent out a house on a zero profit basis.
I certainly can’t afford 15k for upgrades and the tenant won’t afford higher rent.

So my options are
1. Hope I can get a grant
2. Sell the property – meaning the tenant will end up paying higher rent to the new owner or have to move out.
3. Get a loan and offset the payments with higher rent.

If I put the rent up the tenant (elderly and poor health, but working part time) will end up with next to nothing to live on and will save practically nothing in energy costs (currently band D).

Once again a one size fits all approach that doesn’t work for anyone.

Reply to the comment left by Jonny Bricks at 16/04/2025 – 16:06
That’s very generous of you, but I tend to find that this often backfires.

For example, the authorities will not care about your generosity and will fine you if you are not complying with all of the c150 regulations.and beneficiaries of generosity are often very forgetful when it comes to reciprocating, or if the sh*t hits the fan.

Why do we not get regular emotive press releases from the NRLA putting our view across?

This country is destroying itself very rapidly. Remember one thing ACORN:- Most tenants have to be tenants, most landlords don’t have to be landlords. The article above read like a landlord hate campaign. It is not a fun role any more. 25 years ago I used to like it.

Thanks to too much legislation and punitive tax rules with the consequent reduction on profitability I have downsized my portfolio massively. I still let to happy (they seemingly never want to move on) families in large London Victorian homes which are hard to make epc C. That said I have completely revamped some houses and made them Cs. However, the black box that churns out the C seems to be somewhat of a random letter generator and I don’t see how I can really stick around with millions invested whilst there is a risk that some clown moves the goalposts and they are no longer Cs. Already these muppets are worrying that a C might not be a C anymore and wanting EPCs redone. – Ok, how about weekly, you know, just in case?

My wife and I have thought for ages that the work involved in completely revamping properties with internal insulation etc is extremely involved and destructive. However, we knew it would only be a matter of time before some moron would be calling for landlords to additionally provide alternative accommodation for tenants during the whole thing, as if a massive bill isn’t already a kicker anyway. Look at what they are saying – make sure there is parking etc. How about a 4 star hotel? Why not, I mean just because 1 night is probably the equivalent of a month’s rent or a year’s profit (which of course you will still be considered as making as the £15k won’t count as an expense – it will be capital). Meanwhile, those of us that own homes that need work suffer in one corner of them or sleep in a caravan in the garden etc whilst the work is carried out.

When you think about it the whole concept of landlording no longer works. At a basic level every person should be somewhat responsible for themselves and the safety and security of their own family they choose to create. We have reached a point where the landlord’s responsibility is now all pervading and it seems that tenants don’t really have any responsibility for anything, even including paying the rent or looking after the home. On a human level this seems wrong.

I would live in ANY of my buy to lets including the attractive double glazed, warm, well decorated houses with granite worktops, landscaped gardens etc that happen to still be EPC D. My own house is an F but I never get round to doing anything with it because I am always too busy pandering to the ever growing list of requirements for letting and I am sick of it.

Let the close out continue.

Is it not odd that a property that costs £1m is subject to a £15k charge as is a property costing £60k.

Apart from the upgrades being totally arbitrary depending on who does the epc this lays bare more flawed policy.

Hardly surprising the sensible are selling and or leaving.

I find comfort in alcohol these days.

Sorry tenant – I dont have alternative accommodation but I did live in my own home while it was totally re-wired (as I didn’t have anywhere else to live and nobody would provide with one). So you’ll have to move around the house while we put external wall insulation in, and mind the holes in the floor, while we do the underfloor insulation. The finished colour is going to be plaster pink.

So I am an electrician who has just a few properties to hopefully give me a modest income when I can’t crawl around in dusty lofts and bash walls anymore. I haven’t decorated my own house in about 15 years but have asked an energy assessor in-between tenancies to tell me what I need to do to bring my rental properties up to EPC C standard. Having taken the advice, spending well over £15k per property plus additional cost of vacant period, they are refurbished to be compliant, cosy and ready for the previous deadline. Now ACORN are saying I should be punished if the standards are modified and for some reason the rating changes slightly. This makes me feel utterly gutted and deflated having supposedly done the “right” thing.

Reply to the comment left by Craig Joyce at 19/04/2025 – 08:38I’d agree with you it’s terribly disheartening. All my five rental properties (three houses and two flats) are C rated. The three houses were built in 1980 and all have fairly new (one is only two years old) A+ rated gas boilers, double glazing, cavity wall insulation and 300mm loft insulation. EPC certificates expire in 2030 and 2032. There’s no much more I can do other than install heat pumps and solar panels and I’m not doing that just to ensure they are rental compliant. I simply don’t have the money and even if I did it wouldn’t make sense to spend such sums on really nice, relatively modern and lovely two bed semis in a nice area. If they change the rating calculation they will have to go up for sale. Which will entail spending £2k on legal fees in the hope of convincing a Judge that I can have permission to sell them.
Regarding the two rental flats these are 15 years old
and were built by Barratts. They have electric panel heaters. If these are downgraded from their current C status to D then what on earth can I do ? I’m not installing storage heaters as they are hard to control, the panels heaters can be switched on and off instantly and hence probably cost less in energy. One flat does not have an Economy 7 electric meter anyway. So two lovely modern flats will become illegal to rent out and will have to go up for sale.
Interestingly non of this EPC malarkey has been passed into law yet. Will the Labour politburo really have the balls to do it ? Could it be challenged in the Courts ? And I don’t have sufficient funds to sell all the properties in one go as they are all mortgaged and I can’t have 5 properties empty and on the market with all the costs that will entail.