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Category: EEAssessors
Find out where to get an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), when you should receive one and when you should provide one. Also, find out about energy assessors who produce EPCs, and what to do if you are not happy with their work.
Where to get an EPC
An EPC is required by law when a building is constructed, sold or put up for rent. If you are a landlord or homeowner and need to provide an EPC, you’ll need to contact an accredited domestic energy assessor. They will carry outthe assessment and produce the certificate.
The accreditation scheme makes sure that domestic energy assessors have the necessary skills and are able to carry out the survey to agreed standards. Domestic energy assessors may be employed by a company (like an estate agent or energy company) or be self-employed. Always check that your domestic energy assessor belongs to an accreditation scheme. You can find a full list of accreditation schemes by following the link below.
Finding an accredited energy assessor
You can use the Energy Performance Certificate and Home Condition Report Register website to search for an accredited domestic energy assessor. This website is run by Landmark, on behalf of the government. You can also find accredited domestic energy assessors by searching online or by looking in the phone book.
How long is your EPC valid for?
EPCs are valid for ten years, except if they are part of a Home Information Pack (HIP). If it is part of a HIP, an EPC must be less than three years old when the building is first put on the market. See ‘Home Information Packs’ for more information about getting a HIP.
- Home Information Packs
What an EPC costs
The price of an EPC is set by the accredited organisations that issue them. When you commission a Home Information Pack, the overall cost should include the cost of an EPC. If you apply for an EPC on its own, it should cost approximately 100 (for an average-sized house).
How long it takes to get an EPC
Getting an EPC for an average-sized home is likely to take the same time as a house valuation report. The exact time will vary from property to property.
What to do if you are not happy with your EPC
If you are not happy, you should discuss your complaint with the domestic energy assessorwho carried out your assessment. Alldomestic energy assessors must have a complaints process in place, so they should be able to provide you with a copy of their complaints procedure. If the complaint isn’t resolved, you can take it to their accreditation scheme.
When you’ll be given an EPC
By law you should receive an EPC in the following cases:
Buying a home
All sellers of homes need to ensure that they provide a Home Information Pack, which includes an EPC, free of charge to potential buyers.
- What are Home Information Packs?
Buying a newly built property
Buyers of newly built properties should receive an EPC, free of charge.
Renting a property
If you are interested in renting a property, the landlord must make an EPC available to you free of charge. However, you dont need an EPC when you are thinking of just renting a room with shared facilities rather than renting the whole property.
If you are not in one of the above categories
Even if you dont fall into the above categories, you can still apply for and receive an EPC from an energy assessor. This may be because you want to know how energy efficient your home is, and make improvements suggested by the recommendation report. To find out more about what an EPC contains, follow the link below.
- Energy Performance Certificates – what they are
What happens if you are not given an EPC
If you are not given an EPC when you are entitled to it, you should contact the trading standards department of your local council. Trading standards officers have the power to issue a fixed penalty notice of 200 for domestic properties where an EPC is not provided.
If you are buying a newly built home and an EPC hasnt been provided, you should contact the building control department of your local council.
- Find your local council
Individual house/dwelling (i.e. a self contained property with its own kitchen/bathroom facilities) – one EPC for the dwelling.
Self contained flats (i.e. each behind its own front door with its own kitchen/bathroom facilities) – one EPC per flat.
Bedsits or room lets where there is a shared kitchen, toilet and/or bathroom) – noEPC is required currently.
Shared flats/houses (e.g. a letting of a whole flat or house to students/young professionals etc) – one EPC for the whole house.
Mixed self contained and non self contained accommodation – one EPC for each self contained flat/unit but no EPC for the remainder of the property.
A room in ahall of residence or hostel – no EPC is required currently.
The requirement to make a copy of the EPC available to a prospective tenant does not apply where a landlord has reasonable ground to believe that a prospective tenant is:-
Unlikely to have sufficient financial means to rent the dwelling
Not genuinely interested in renting the dwelling of that particular type
Not a person to whom the landlord would be likely to be prepared to rent out the property
Although no EPC is currently required for bedsits, holiday lets or hostels, the Government has consulted on their proposal of extending them to these type of lets.
There are fixed penalties for failing to provide an EPC/make one available when required. The fixed penalty for dwellings is £200 per dwelling. There is asix month time limit for any enforcement action to be taken.
If your letting out a property for 4 months or more of the year, you will need a energy performance certificate
You may want to start with find a local independent letting agent and ask them to find you a suitable tenant for a one off fee and take over the management your self.
Here are a few tips if thinking of letting a property, by law you need have gas and electricity certificates and a energy performance certificates carried out before you let your home out, you can source these trades people out by doing a google search in your local area. Please make sure that the gentleman who carries out the gas certificate is Corgi registered and the Domestic energy assessor providing the energy performance certificate is accredited.http://www.eeassessors.com/epcs.html
You will need to take a deposit for the protection of furnishing and fittings in the property, this protects you the landlord and the tenant. You will need to find a deposit scheme that you can bank the money with for the safe keeping of landlord or tenant, if a dispute should arise.http://www.depositprotection.com/
Also you will need an inventory carried out this records all your furnishings and internal and external goods and makes a note of condition of furnishings and fittings backed up by photographs, this can be used in a court of law if a dispute should arise from the tenant who may vandal or destroying your property, (Tenancy protection scheme)
If you do not have any of the above in place it could work out very costly in the long run.
Smoke detectors should be places in the property also
http://www.lettingaproperty.com/letting-resources/gas-safety-certificate
Landlords may have as little as five years to upgrade their properties to a minimum energy standard or have them banned from the market.
They would face criminal prosecution if they marketed a rental property with an EPC rating of less than E. They are being told to wake up to a new regime, where they must look on higher EPC requirements as part of an essential health and safety regime.
Around 30 organisations have called for a minimum energy efficiency standard to be legally required of all private rented homes in 2016, and are demanding that a new law is introduced.
Over 180 MPs have so far supported the demand – which would affect an estimated 150,000 rental properties – via an Early Day Motion.
The new law would make it an offence to market rental properties with an EPC rating lower than E, with both landlords and letting agents facing prosecution, although it is not clear yet what the penalties would be.
The organisations demanding the change include charities such as Child Poverty Action Group, local authorities, consumer groups and environmental campaigners including Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund.
If they get their way, the new law would accelerate the Government’s existing proposed timetable by two years.
The Energy Bill, due back before Parliament in the autumn and which ushers in the Green Deal, has had a new clause added to it, outlawing colder rental properties by 2018.
But the campaigners say this is unacceptably late and that the Green Deal proposal leaves too much to chance.
They also argue that it has loopholes. They claim that as long as landlords undertake the improvements for which finance is available under the Green Deal, they would be able to carry on letting out unacceptably cold properties indefinitely: this is because the property might not have been improved to the E banding on an EPC.
The campaigners also say that the Green Deal proposal to allow tenants to ask the landlord for energy improvements would lead to tenants being evicted.
The groups are therefore arguing for a new law requiring basic standards of insulation and heating in private rented properties.
Audrey Gallacher, director of energy at Consumer Focus, one of the groups calling for the change, said: “With almost 12 million people expected to be living in fuel poverty when the latest round of price rises hits, tackling this problem is a major issue. Private rented housing is among the coldest and most likely to leak heat – meaning bigger bills and a greater risk to renters’ health.”
“Bringing this requirement into law would save private renters almost £500 a year on average off their energy bill and cut carbon emissions by almost 200 million tonnes a year. Current legislation isn’t enough to make this happen, so we need the UK Government to act to help the many vulnerable households affected.”
We asked Consumer Focus to comment on speculation that landlords would simply sell properties that they felt were too expensive to upgrade, bringing an influx of cold homes into private owner-occupation – private owners being under no compulsion to upgrade their properties.
Gallacher responded: “The need to invest in energy efficiency might put off some landlords, particularly those with older properties. However, we hope responsible landlords will recognise the benefits, not only to their tenants’ health and safety from warmer and cheaper to run homes, but also the long-term improvement to their property, its saleable value and their ability to rent it out.”
“Landlords must start to view these energy efficiency moves as standard health and safety requirements, and incorporate them into their renovation and maintenance programmes, to sustain their property’s marketability.”
“Older housing can be more difficult to make energy efficient. However, Green Deal finance will remove the barrier of upfront cost, and there will be additional support for properties with solid walls. We also urge landlords to, where possible, take advantage of current insulation offers for loft and cavity wall insulation.”
“We would also like to see action to remove barriers for leaseholders; clear planning guidance for listed buildings and conservation areas which are harder to treat; and improved Energy Performance Certificates which make the value of energy efficiency clear to tenants and buyers.”
Welcome to Eco Energy blog!
This blog is about improving comfort and reducing fuel bills; we hope that you will find these tips and advices useful and you may start to make changes in order to reduce energy cost and cut co2 admissions!
Eco Energy Assessors, formed in 2007 providing Energy Performance Certificates to the housing sector, such as estate agents, letting agents Solicitors and conveyancing companies and not to forget the general public who may be selling or renting a home. Our aim as an independent energy assessor, is to calculate how each home may be loosing energy; costing the home owner or tenant costly energy bills they can not afford due to heat escaping from the home or not implementing recommendations from the energy report.
