Earlier this month, I wrote about Ed Miliband’s policy requiring landlords to pay for Net Zero upgrades to their properties, and how this will impact tenants. Landlords are an easy target for governments because they are seen as earning while idle. Yet such divide-and-rule policies have very obvious secondary consequences, and it is inevitable that such costs will be passed on, one way or another, to renters, because either landlords will quit the market or they will demand higher rents. Now, it turns out that the Government has admitted this is the case.
The rules require that rental properties have an EPC grade C by 2030, and as explained previously, this will in turn require outlays of tens of thousands of pounds on average. Now, the Telegraph is reporting that, though Ed Miliband denied that costs would be passed on, Shadow Housing Secretary Kevin Hollinrake asked Justice minister Sarah Sackman to confirm that this was the case. She replied, “Expenditure on the upgrading of an energy performance certificate to a higher level of energy efficiency is a material consideration, which may result, in certain circumstances, in a higher market rent being determined.”
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