RentFair's View

In this article, Christian Duggan, our founding director, argues that EPCs are a misguided waste of everyone’s resources.

Last autumn, I put my house on the market and, with great reluctance, paid for a HIP as I am legally obliged to do.  The house didn’t sell and the HIP is now out of date and has gone in my recycling bin.  The EPC report told me the startling fact that I could save money on heating by insulating my loft and installing low-energy lightbulbs.  Brilliant.  Who would have guessed?  I’d have thrown the EPC in the bin too, but I’m now letting the house out and have given it to my bemused tenants instead.

"a piece of paper telling you the blindingly obvious..."

So what exactly is the point of the new landlords’ EPC for rented property?   Is it for the benefit of tenants?  Well, not really, no.  Tenants want to know how big the bedrooms are, whether they can walk to the train station without being mugged and, most importantly, is there room for negotiation on the rent.   The majority of tenants rent for short-term -  a year or two at the very most – and in more than 10 years of letting I have never once been asked about anything to do with the energy efficiency of my properties.  The plain fact is that 99.9% of tenants don’t give a fig if they get an E-rated property. 

So is it for the benefit of landlords?  Well, it would be if it made a rental property more desirable so that it was either (a) easier to attract tenants or (b) a higher rent could be charged, or (c) both.  That’s a no then.

Well perhaps it benefits the environment?  Er...no again.  It may seem obvious but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.  The EPC doesn’t actually insulate the loft or seal your windows; it’s just a piece of paper.  It has zero benefit to the environment.  In fact, the hundreds of EPC inspectors driving around the country contribute to carbon emissions and my HIP certainly wasn’t printed on recycled paper.   

OK, but surely an EPC benefits the environment indirectly by making landlords aware of how their properties are wasting energy?   Well, call me cynical, but I don’t think most landlords care, seeing as it’s the tenants who pay the heating bills. 

To add to this, a large proportion of UK housing stock is Victorian and built without cavity walls, making cavity wall insulation physically impossible.  Similarly, ripping out single-glazed Victorian sash windows to replace them with UPVC double-glazed units is also undesirable.  True, wooden double-glazed sash replacements are available but at enormous cost (I recently paid £1000 per window).  And, whilst loft insulation may be a possibility – to state the obvious again – it can only be installed if you have a loft.  That excludes all flats except those on the top floor and most properties with flat roofs.    Joe Investor who’s bought Apartment 243 on the fourth floor of a 12 storey apartment block in Leeds has no loft and no power to instal cavity wall insulation.  His lease also probably prevents him from changing the windows.  So he would understandably be quite cross at having to fork out for an EPC.

The idea of persuading us all to insulate our homes and use less energy is admirable.  But consider this example.   EPC’s cost between £70 and £100, sometimes more.   I recently installed loft insulation in my own home and it cost me £54 in total for 6 rolls of insulation.  I fitted them in an afternoon.  Not a pleasant job, I admit, and if you pay someone to do it for you it will cost a little more.  But my point is this:  isn’t the £100 better spent in actually insulating the loft rather than producing a piece of paper telling you the blindingly obvious?