What the government’s EPC consultation means for landlords

Reply to the comment left by Wayne Church at 11/02/2025 – 16:29
Thank you this info, but no supplementary heating. The house was empty when assessed, so no heaters owned by previous tenants.

I managed to get one house up 6 points by changing lights and challenging the low epc given as they had made harsh assumptions.

My second property situation just about sums up our government’s approach – to achieve a c i must REMOVE A CAPPED FIREPLACE. Yep, that’s right, even a feature one that’s disconnected brings down the epc.
So , clap clap clap to labour, my tenants loose their feature fireplace and have a week of work and dust around their newborn while I put my hand in my pocket to remove an already disconnected gas fireplace and have to strip the walls and re floor where the base was…whos actually benefiting here ?
How did we get to this MADNESS.

Hi

I don’t get one thing what’s a hmo property got to do with epc when the landlord pays the energy cost to run the property for tennants and room rent is below the market rate by at least £100 to £200 depending on rooms.

Isn’t this my cost to bear?

I’ve been a letting agent for 30 years. Whilst I’m delighted that standards have improved, recent changes have throttled the market, reduced the number of lettings coming online and forced more landlords to leave the market. The end game for the government is not to improve standards; it is quite clearly to shrink the PRS so that homeownership increases. Let’s call it what it is. They get to win the popularity contest and take in loads in CGT at the same time. It’s just more controlling people’s actions to meet their own financial ends and try to pay off this debt they’ve left us all in. Like they care that much about energy efficiency! If they did all new homes would have solar, heat pumps etc etc and yet they don’t. It’s just another landlord raid.

It’s great that social housing is exempt from these plans presumably because of the cost! I guess hammering the private sector is ok because it is a victimless tax (apart from the landlords and the tenants who will have these costs passed down to them).
If the government was committed to carbon reduction rather than interfering in a private sector they could bring in an EPC E for 100% of housing rather than EPC C for 20%.

Again I ask, can this not be challenged?

Reply to the comment left by Andrew Strevens at 13/02/2025 – 09:06You might be right and if you’re a letting agent you’ll know more about it than I do. It seems to me though that the government’s aim is not to destroy the PRS but to end up with a lettings sector that is dominated by incorporated landlords. But whether I’m right about that or not, that’s what the effect of government policy is.

I do think you are right about the present government milking landlords for CGT (and also income tax because non-incorporated landlords can’t offset their finance costs). Most BTL properties are not yet incorporated. People would be well advised to take them into a Ltd co. structure if they can before they do anything that significantly increases the value because the majority of small landlords are under attack.

If improving your EPC significantly increases the value of your property and you are not already in a limited company I think the bottom line is, if you don’t have to do it then don’t do it. Do only the minimum required to comply.

Reply to the comment left by ellis freeman at 13/02/2025 – 09:37
Why couldn’t it be challenged? This is gross discrimination at the very least. Picking on private LL to suit their own agenda. Yes, the tiny 20% of housing and it won’t make the slightest difference to net zero , carbon emissions call it what you like. This will drive many LL out of the PRS and will dump many tenants into the already bursting council office. This is the consequence of a failing incompetent government which is certainly not fit for purpose…just like the current EPC and no doubt the future EPC. If all LL got together and contributed just a small amount of money is it not possible to bring action against these mindless things because that’s all they are IMO.

Reply to the comment left by PH at 13/02/2025 – 11:51
Fortunately the EPC system is under review at the moment so perhaps it can be changed to make it easier to challenge an EPC, or perhaps to get a second opinion and replace the first EPC. Competition in the “EPC sector” might not be a bad thing and it might also not be a bad thing if those companies issuing EPCs had to declare conflicts of interest….e.g. any commercial links with companies selling cavity wall insulation.

In my case the example that I gave above where I had someone point a thermal camera at my building was a building with high quality brick, modern (1960s) DPC, cavity walls with no insulation when first built. One side of the house had a first-floor extension built by a company that quoted for putting insulation (required at the time by the building regulations), which given the time was probably rockwool. Rockwool is a good material for cavity insulation because it doesn’t wick moisture, it breathes, and any moisture entering the cavity can filter downwards. Other materials may not breathe as well or may represent an additional fire-risk. Polystyrene for example can burn even in a wall as polystyrene beads trap air and have air trapped inside them. Polystyrene may also trap moisture in walls.

When we pointed the thermal camera at the building there was no difference in heat loss between the upper extension and the lower building walls that had no insulation. Cavity walls themselves do trap air and provide some insulation (although not as much as rockwool). You could speculate that the addition of insulation in the first storey extension trapped the air in the original lower storey cavity wall, and thereby improved insulation. However, when we also pointed the thermal camera at the other parts of the property that had no insulation there was still no difference in heat loss between walls with upper storey insulation and walls with no insulation in either the upper or lower storey.

Where the heat was being lost was around or through the windows. And of course through the doors when the doors were opened.

Now if I were to extend this property I would certainly specify rockwool (or better non-wicking, fire resistant) insulation in the walls. However, looking at this one property it seems to me that I ought to have a case to move it from band D to band C by changing the windows from double glazed to triple glazed. And I could make other improvements that (unlike CWI) would not damage the property. Unfortunately, without installing CWI (which would be damaging) or ripping the inside of the house apart to fit internal insulation it would be difficult and expensive for me to do very much about the thermal efficiency of the house. And to make matters worse, triple glazing is capital expenditure, not revenue expenditure.

Hopefully there is somebody out there in government who understands that is important for us to be able to challenge the assumptions in an EPC assessment with science, evidence and robust data.

Reply to the comment left by PH at 13/02/2025 – 11:51
Could a partition not work, I am sure the required signatures of 10,000 signatures, petitions get a response from the government. After 100,000 signatures.

I would think that should be relatively easy.

If worded correctly to link in that BEFORE they ruin the private sector, they should bring the millions of social and council housing, that live slum like conditions, up to the current private sector standard.

I am sure most social and council tenants would sign up, people I know who live in social / council housing, the standards are more than shocking, any private housing to that low standard, the council would be out to take action in a second or less!

I am sure someone who is eloquent ,could draw up a suitable challenge, if millions of social and council tenants stand up, then it could help reform the playing field via a pertition