Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) will be required for rented dwellings and Right to Buy sales across England and Wales from October 2008. In this article Matthew Culnane, Communications Executive for National Energy Services, provides an introduction to your obligations, some implementation options for social landlords as well as highlighting the potential benefits.
EPCs must be produced as a legal requirement - a full copy must be presented to prospective tenants when a property is marketed and also provided to the ultimate tenant, both free of charge. Written particulars about a property must include the EPC or at least the energy efficiency and ‘Environmental Impact’ ratings. Where an EPC cannot be provided straight away for valid reasons, it must be produced as soon as possible. For existing dwellings, EPCs must be produced by a qualified and accredited Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) who is a member of an approved Accreditation Scheme.
Once produced, an EPC is valid for use in the rental sector for 10 years. This applies to EPCs issued for both existing and newbuild properties. An EPC can be re-used any number of times for rental properties, provided it is less than 10 years old. However, if a new EPC is produced for a property, this supersedes any older one.
A new EPC does not need be provided on renewal of a tenancy agreement. If the existing tenants (on 1st October 2008) do not move out until, say, 2030 then it will not be compulsory to produce an EPC for that property until this time. You may wish to update the EPC for a property following energy efficiency works so it remains accurate, although this is not compulsory. In England and Wales, EPCs will be accompanied by a Recommendations Report which will prioritise potential energy efficiency measures and show what savings the measures would affect. There is no obligation to implement the measures.
Guidance for landlords on the implementation of EPCs is expected to be released by Communities and Local Government (CLG) shortly. This will include EPC requirements for scenarios including HMOs, self-contained flats and sheltered accommodation.
Regulations around some very important issues are yet to be clarified by CLG. For instance, many local authorities and RSLs already have large amounts of information about their housing stock which could be useful for the production of EPCs. We already know that the responsible DEAs will be able to use existing data, but do not have enough information to know how precisely this might work.
It is possible for landlords to use ‘cloning’ or multiple certification – where some or all the information collected for one property can be duplicated to create EPCs for sufficiently similar properties as well as the original property.
COMPANIES ARE BEGINNING TO OFFER THEIR SERVICES TO LANDLORDS WITH ARRANGEMENTS FOR THIS IN PLACE. FOR LANDLORDS WITH A LARGE NUMBER OF ASSETS, CLONING MAY OFFER SIGNIFICANT COST SAVINGS.
There are many options for meeting your EPC obligations and the total cost may vary significantly depending on the approach taken. As a social landlord, when defining a strategy for EPC production you should also consider many things including:
- What is the size and turnover of your stock? Does this differ for houses and flats? You may wish to adopt different approaches for different property groups.
- Do you want to get all your EPCs straight away, or fund the work as and when required?
- Do you need to comply with particularly speedy void turnaround times?
- Are the properties similar (and therefore suitable for cloning)?
- How dispersed are your properties?
- What asset management system do you have in place now, does it include energy data, and if so how many of the RDSAP data fields does it contain? Is it capable of producing EPCs?
- Do you have existing contracts for stock condition surveys or similar?
- Do you envisage taking on the bulk of the work yourself, or outsourcing it?
Following 1st October, you should also expect to receive a number of queries about the content of the EPC and the Recommendations Report. You may wish to provide staff with information to respond to these, including an understanding of the content of an EPC and details of any planned energy efficiency improvements.
