Energy Saving Trust urges government to ban inefficient homes from 2015

The Energy Saving Trust is advising government that owners of poorly insulated homes should not be allowed to sell or rent them until they have invested in energy efficiency measures.  Currently, more than a fifth of homes (around 5.5 million) are rated F or G for energy performance.  The Trust says that these homes should also be subject to higher council tax bills and additional stamp duty.  It believes that tough measures will be needed to achieve the Government’s target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from home heating by 29 per cent by 2020 and to “almost zero” by 2050.

The trust is advising the Government to make it illegal, from 2015, to offer for sale any home rated lower than E.  (There would be exceptions for listed buildings if the owners could prove that energy efficiency measures would damage their historic character.)
The Trust estimates that 85 per cent of the homes in bands F and G could be made fit to sell for less than £5,000.  However, owners of the remaining 15 per cent face paying as much as £10,000 to upgrade their homes to a new minimum standard.

F-rated homes include Victorian terraced properties with single-glazed sash windows and boilers at least ten years old.  G-rated homes tend to be detached and have no loft insulation.
In the low carbon White Paper published last month, the government admitted that existing measures, which focus on giving advice and offering grants towards the cost of insulation, might not be sufficient to achieve reductions in energy use.

In an interview with The Times, Marian Spain, the Trust’s director of strategy, said, “We need a powerful incentive to act as a backstop in case other measures do not work. To sell your home, you would need to have done the basics to take it out of the F and G ratings. The final deadline should be 2015.”