LL no longer has to upgrade EPC by 2025.

[caringcarer]

I've just heard on TV news that LL's no longer have to upgrade houses by 2025. I think that's good news for LL and renter's. It's very expensive to upgrade old Victorian terrace houses that can't have external cavity wall insulation and internal walls being built is very expensive and makes rooms smaller. I was quoted £13.5k for a 2 bedroom Victorian terrace and £16k for a large 3 bedroom Victorian terrace. All to save tenants approximately £10 a month.

Great for landlords and renters maybe.

Not so great for the future of the planet.

You take your chances.

You'll be able to knock £10pm off the rent then.

I have mixed emotions on this. On the one hand, I feel sorry for the hundreds of LLs who actually believed this was going to be enforced (I never did) and sold their rentals.

On the other hand, I know from bitter personal experience that the EPC system is deeply flawed and not fit for purpose.

I'm glad I'm in a warm home this winter. My former LL was exceptionally wealthy (I'm not even talking 'just' a few million) and most of his homes just reached the legal E within 1 or 2 points with single glazing, faulty heating systems, no insulation, ancient boilers, vast voids under the floors, and so on. The energy we used in that house because of the deeply flawed EPC calcs was three times what the EPC said it should be.

They don't actually test anything, you see. And it's one size fits all no matter the location, which is absurd given the weather extremes from one end of the country to another.

It was costing us £650 a month when we left (our electricity was £200 a month on top of it). When the cost of oil spiked in March 22, we knew it would have been almost double that during the cold winter months.

Let me tell you - that £650 a month was barely enough to keep me warm enough to be able to even cook dinner. That house didn't hold heat for longer than 30 minutes, so even spending more and blasting the heating high was a fruitless endeavour.

So, I'm really quite sad that slumlords won't be held to account.

But, frankly, even if it had become law, it never would have been enforced, just like everything else in this country. It's nothing but lip service, ever. Enforcement of landlords with EPCs has to be applied for locally, and, if you're lucky, your local government might fund 1.5 people for 1 year to crack down on specific landlords illegally renting F+ homes, or those who haven't bothered with ratings.

That even that doesn't deal with the fact that what you see on a property rated E (and probably some Ds) is in no way based on the reality of the amount of energy that home actually uses.

I am glad the good, conscientious landlords will not have to sell up, but it still leaves a massive gap for those who just DGOS to take advantage and put people in balls off cold homes that are barely possible to heat because a piece of paper with a bunch of standard calculations says it is possible.

epc’s are not worth the paper they’re written on but the policy is very short sighted. Price of gas is only going to go in one direction in time. Electricity should fall. The sooner LLs replace old boilers with heat pumps (where possible) the lower the future energy costs will be. Presumably LLs are still entitled to the now £7.5k heat pump grant available. That’s quite a lot
and will cover the entirety of the install in some cases.

rishi has his eye on more votes for the next election that’s all. And while he might gain a few I think he’ll lose a lot more.

@StillWantingADog I keep reading that ASHPs quite often require almost double the number of radiators to be installed and because you have to keep them on 24/7 actually cost as much to run as gas CH (as elec is x3, x4 more expensive than gas?).

Good luck getting landlords and homeowners to absorb those costs. They're giving 7.5k instead of 5k, right? But iirc the average installation costs 12-15k before you start messing around with extra radiators and/or insulation.

We just don't have good enough solutions to improve energy efficiency that the average consumer can hope to afford.

@KievLoverTwo We've just had a ASHP installed so I have direct experience. We have only had ours a few months so not quite sure yet but the calculations we have made suggest that the cost to run will be approximately the same over a 12 month period. In summer it costs us almost nothing because we have solar to power it (it's only on for hot water in summer). In the future though when the electricity costs should fall compared with gas, it should be cheaper.
Our installation cost in total 13k - minus 5k grant. However we were relatively lucky with insulation but unlucky with radiators, all of which had to be replaced but we don't have any more than we did before (they are bigger though). You're right it's out of reach for most. We WANTED to do it but most people don't have that luxury. ASHPs work best with underfloor heating which we'd all love I'm sure but I'm not sure that many people are up for ripping up their floors even if they wanted to.

However if the government properly subsidises the industry (not just offering grants to home owners) then there is the potential for the prices of the hardware to significantly fall. Installers are charging a lot at the moment partly because there's so few of them.

@StillWantingADog thanks for the details. How many sq ft is your house and how many floors?

Also, did you ever get a dog? :)

"@KievLoverTwo
sorry I don't know many sq foot but it's a fairly roomy and modern (15 years old) 5 bed house. Pretty good contenders for an AHSP as it goes.

I'm still wanting a dog and not getting any further, sadly.

@StillWantingADog so you already had pretty modern insulation?

Sad to hear about the dog :(

Yeah didn’t have to do anything on that front

I also have a Victorian BTL and would have sold . It's in an area where rental yields are very low so financially it makes no sense at all to spend £15k upwards on a flat worth no more than £85k .

@hattie43 it seems to me that government help for LL's should be proportional to the rent charged and the overall value of the property.

The rent I paid on the aforementioned property was 1500 pm and the house (which had 1/3 acre of land) was probably worth 550-700k.

LL's like you should get far more financial assistance than LL's like that ^.

As always, it's a one size fits all approach that hardly ever helps those who need it most.

BBC documentary covering air source heat pumps and other potential sources of energy:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fzltvd/what-they-really-mean-for-you-series-1-2-heat-pumps