Like, most of central Bath?
Landlords face a £23bn bill to upgrade properties to meet the Government’s new green energy rules.
Owners will have to pay to upgrade their properties to meet a minimum Energy Performance Certificate rating of “band C”. The planned deadline for newly let properties is 2025. For all existing lets, the deadline will be 2028.
4 inch ashlar construction, no cavity walls, Grade II* listed, no double glazing allowed? Not even satellite dishes so heat pumps are definitively out.
It’s almost like central planning cannot deal with variation and nuance, isn’t it?
There are derogations for listed properties. Lifted from https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/your-home/saving-energy/energy-performance-regulations/ as I couldn’t be bothered to try to re-find the primary legislation…
Are listed buildings exempt from the need to have an EPC?
From January 2013 there has been an ‘exemption’ for listed buildings.
However, the exemption is qualified, it states: “Insofar as compliance with certain minimum energy performance requirements would unacceptably alter their character or appearance”.
What does this qualification mean?
The qualification covers works that might be carried out to the property to improve its energy performance. These are works that would require consent under Part L of the building regulations (The Conservation of Fuel and Power) and would be included in the recommendations section of an EPC report if one was obtained. If such works would unacceptably alter the building’s character or appearance, then the listed building would qualify for an exemption.
You “could” build an insulated box inside the rooms leaving the listed fabric untouched. With sufficient depth of insulation you can compensate for the heat loss through the existing windows. It would of course make the rooms smaller, possibly to the extent that fitting in the furniture would be a problem. The value of the value of the property would be trashed too.
The problem is the same with many newer houses too. If cavity insulation is insufficient and external insulation is ruled out (think Grenfell Tower) the insulation needs to go inside the house. Imagine what that will do to those expensive fitted kitchens when a couple of walls need to move inwards by a couple of inches. The kitchen units and worktop no longer fit and the pipework doesn’t line up either. It’s potentially even worse for small bedrooms where now you can barely squeeze around the bed.
You have to knock all those old fashioned environmentally unfriendly buildings and replace them with brand new dwellingpods. Our scientists are finalising the designs now, and we are instructing the young global leaders what legal changes are needed.
There will be further requirements. The doors will only open to let you out of your dwellingpod if you present your vaccine passport and have not exceeded your weekly bug ration, and there is no lockdown for this year’s virus of choice.
This is one of my pet peeves, regular rant even. One one hand we’ve got “must improve energy efficiency”, on the other we’ve got “no, it’s listed/in a conservation area and you’re not allowed to do what you want with your own property”. The colleges here in Cambridge really suffer from listed status’ enforced building ossification, with the most stupid vetoes from English Heritage or whoever it is that enforces listed status. There’s one Elizabethan building that has cracks in the walls that you can put your hands through, but they’re not allowed to even fill the cracks, never mind insulate the walls because “it would change the intrinsic nature of the building”. Living buildings get hacked about endlessly by the owners. Prevent that and the building eventually becomes a useless museum piece.
Yes Arthur!!!!!
But, but Klaus, we’ve just been told by our exceedingly expert MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee that we should no longer demolish and rebuild, as that is frying the planet.
I live in A Grade II* house. I have sat dishes, but they are not visible from the street. My neighbours have had double glazing put in after a change of planning officer. What he has specified is horrible, so I won’t have it in my house. Thick curtains do the job just as well.
In Germany they are undertaking an even worse policy. Landlords are expected to pay a carbon levy based on how efficient their buildings are. This is being tested in Baden Wurttemberg I believe. I do not know if there will be a rent freeze to accompany this lunatic plan.
What gets me is that Bath is exactly the sort of twee English town will be absolutely infested with middle-class envirofascists who’ll be fully in favour of all this compulsion whilst expecting exemptions on the listed slums they’ve chosen to live in.
In Germany they are undertaking an even worse policy. Landlords are expected to pay a carbon levy based on how efficient their buildings are.
I don’t like any of it, but I think that is actually better than the UK option. The cost of the carbon levy would have to be spectacular to make it a worse option than spending tens of thousands on works which ruin your property.
We let our house out because we get a free one with the wife’s job. But this will cost a year’s income after tax, plus the loss of rent, plus all the hassle. I’m tempted to jack it all in, so thanks, Boris. Why not let the market decide?
And when are they going to start sending the enforcers round to private owner-occupiers?
@Sam Vara – probably because legislators feel they have to legislate and are incapable of foreseeing any consequence other than the one they seek to achieve. Make being a landlord sufficiently burdensome and landlords will sell their properties which will reduce the number of properties available to rent.
Easy bureaucratic solution:
– simply ban buildings that can’t meet the new minimum green standards from being rented out.
(I realise this won’t be helpful)
Alternatively, throw all the twats out of helicopters.
Long-term one solution is to knock down and rebuild the structure while maintaining the classical facade. Lots of places in London have done this. It’s expensive though; only usually worthwhile if you can add several floors up and/or down.
What gets me is that Bath is exactly the sort of twee English town will be absolutely infested with middle-class envirofascists who’ll be fully in favour of all this compulsion whilst expecting exemptions on the listed slums they’ve chosen to live in.
They should be forced to dress and travel as seen in the picture above; as in the days when coal was good.
Andrew M,
Isn’t that what they did to Downing Street?
This only applies to landlords not owner-occupiers. So you simply sell your house/flat for whatever you can get for it and file a CGT loss on your tax return – unfortunately that loss is only usable against a future profit on the sale of a buy-to-let house.
Yes, loss even in £terms despite inflation because there will be lots and lots of house with grade D, E, or F EPCs coming onto the market in a very short period which will clobber the supply/demand ratio for owner-occupied housing.
You “could” build an insulated box inside the rooms leaving the listed fabric untouched. With sufficient depth of insulation you can compensate for the heat loss through the existing windows. It would of course make the rooms smaller, possibly to the extent…
…that they are illegal to rent
Small third bedrooms in many houses now illegal to rent. Can’t afford larger room? Tough, sleep on park bench
@Klaus
Very good
@Ottokring
Correct, sat dishes OK if not visibe from street
@Sam Vara
+1 on “Let the market decide”
I rented a very cheap tiny 7″ x 6″ 3rd bedroom in a London house as I was saving to buy my own home. 4th ‘bedroom’ was downstairs front room. House was good: living room, kitchen, larder, bathroom, downstairs toilet, garden, garage, 3 car drive. Tiny bedroom perfecty OK
@john77
+1
Socialists Brown then Osoborn and Hammond totally screwed private landlords
Now we have
Sunak the most successful socialist Chancellor this century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhQDr1j2bYI
Pcar: did you need to drink Alice’s drink before you could fit in it? 🙂
TG
He had to sleep standing up.
Or perhaps hanging upside down… Are you a vampire, Pcar ?
@ Pcar
(On the assumption that you mean 7’x 6′ and not inches) I reckon the bedroom I had for most of my childhood (from age 6 until I left home) was roughly that size – not tiny IMHO if it just a bedroom not a bedsitter. The bedroom I used when visiting my grandmother was about 7′ by 4’6″
I’ve just had to have an EPC on one of our rental properties – it was a C last time, it’s D this time, WTF ? But only by one point, and if I remove the radiator (which is never used anyway) from the front porch then the partial single glazing magically disappears and it’ll be a C again. Our other property is also D, but by including the smart radiator controls (which the assessor missed), that too will be a C – just.
And those are for 1990s built properties. I can see a lot of older ones going on the market.
What fun awaits anyone silly enough to install a heat pump as demanded by our current gov – they’ll find it’ll hammer their EPC as heat pumps are classed as electric heating and score very much worse than a gas boiler. Another example of joined up legislation.
Typo: 7ft x 6ft. Sorry
Bed was 2’6′ wide
3rd bedroom in our 1980s 3 bed semi is now illegal to rent. As are both 3rd bedrooms in pre WWII 3 bed semis my parents grew up in
As John77 says a bedroom not a bedsitter
Gov’t never care about consequences, only a good headline tomorrow
Sunak has failed on that with artiles across media savaging his tax & spend announcement as it will increase inflation and deter investment
BP to review all North Sea investment in light of windfall tax
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/26/ftse-100-markets-live-windfall-tax-bp-share-price-energy/
We’ll all pay the price for Rishi Sunak’s handouts
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-ll-all-pay-the-price-for-rishi-sunak-s-handouts
Boris & Sunak say they will give “Their” £400 to charity. It’s my £400, not theirs, they should give it HMRC