Date Published 06 October 2023
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that no legislation will be introduced requiring property owners to make energy efficiency improvements. However extra money will still be available to those who want to replace their gas boiler with a heat pump.
All of the policies to force Landlords to upgrade their EPC rating of their properties have been ruled out. This includes properties to adhere to a minimum EPC rating of C by 2025 for new tenancies, all rental properties by 2028 and the net zero goal by 2050 has been scrapped.
The boiler upgrade scheme will see an increase from £5,000 to £7,500 with ‘no strings attached'. This grant is available to support the installation of heat pumps and biomass boilers in homes and non-domestic buildings in England and Wales. In the short term, increasing grants for the boiler upgrade schemes will support more Landlords and homeowners, but awareness of the scheme still remains low.
Research from Shawbrook shows that 80 per cent of Landlords say they were already prepared for the 2025 EPC regulation deadline. Almost a third of these Landlords said their properties already have an EPC rating of A-C, while half said they had plans in place to improve their EPC rating before 2025. 17 per cent they were not prepared and had no plans to improve the EPC rating of their property. The remaining 3 per cent said they had not heard of the regulation.
These changes have caused a strong attack on the Prime Minister by anti-landlord activists and generation rent over the subject of energy efficiency. Generation rent has said that government failure to regulate Landlords is discouraging nearly half of private renters from applying for grants to insulate their homes. It claims fears of rent rises and evictions, or simply the landlord saying no, are putting off 48 per cent of private renters from applying for grants which would improve their home's energy efficiency and cut their bills.
