Finally, stumbling over the line six weeks or so before pre-election purdah puts everything into mothballs, the regulations requiring landlords, by 2018, to ensure their rented properties exceed a very basic test of energy-worthiness before they can be rented out have been laid before Parliament. Now lest that first sentence sound a bit churlish, let’s be clear: hooray. The regulations themselves are sound. OK it’s only energy efficiency band ‘E’ (the bands go from G – meaning your house, energy efficiency-wise, is more like a gazebo than a property, to A – which envisages homes that are so efficient they don’t use much energy at all to heat and power, and may anyway create their own energy to do so) so it’s not that far up the scale. But since private rented homes are among the least energy efficient properties as a group it represents a real step forward for tenants warmth and property efficiency across the country. And the penalties for non-compliance are proportionate to the cost of actually doing something – i.e. more than it is likely to cost landlords to do up their homes to conform (which as the Association for the Conservation of Energy and others have shown is, in most cases, a pretty modest sum – perhaps £1500 or so).
The regulations don’t of course cover a large part of the private rented scene, which is where parts of properties in which people are living jointly are let out on individual tenancies: Houses in Multiple Occupation or HMOs. This remains a real gap in provision, since it means that thousands of properties in most large towns and cities will simply be exempt. This raises the not entirely fanciful prospect of some landlords straying into letting properties out as HMOs and not single tenancies over the next few years so that they do not have to improve their properties to let them. I shall certainly continue to pursue this gap in the regulations, which surely, a future government more interested in energy efficiency across the piece will have to fill…which brings me to the slightly more churlish bit of the piece.
The Energy Act 2011, from which these regulations derive, received its Royal Assent on 10th November 2011. That’s a piece of legislation passed by Parliament, supported generally all-round, although there were moves during its passage to move the qualifying date for landlords to comply forward to 2016. No, we were told, 2018 is a better forward date, because after the regulations are in, that gives five to six years to move towards compliance, instead of about three if the date is met at 2016.
So, a mere three years and three months later, regulations (which were probably written and ready to go by early 2012) finally emerge, giving landlords, yes, about three years to move to compliance. So why the inordinate and otherwise inexplicable delay?
Introducing the measure yesterday, Ed Davey gave it away, although when he was in undifferentiated mode as Secretary of State, he played a straight bat when I enquired, repeatedly about the non-appearance of the regulations. ‘Well’ he said, ‘’I wish the regulations had been brought in earlier.’ Battles within the coalition had apparently delayed them. ‘Not everyone in this government wants more regulation. But in energy efficiency regulation plays a crucial role’. Quite so Ed.
So who might it be that the battles were with? Not the Ministry of Defence obviously – the finger very rapidly and accurately points at our not very green at all friend in DCLG, Mr Pickles. Quite scandalously, in fact, that a modest follow on measure from an Act agreed by Parliament which would make a big difference on housing fitness and tenant welfare at small cost, and even endorsed by the National Landlords Association, has been blocked. Blocked by the head of the department that is supposed to be all about housing and standards therein, and only eventually unstitched because, I understand No. 10 very belatedly told them to stop messing around. In another system someone ought to be accountable for that kind of attempted extended sabotage on a measure agreed by Parliament. Not in this one though.
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