All landlords in the UK are now legally required to provide their tenants with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) or face a fine of up to £200. The law applies to new leases made after 1 October 2008. Where tenants entered occupancy prior to that date, EPC is not required until a new lease is started. Once obtained, the EPC has a duration of 10 years.

The certificate looks similar to that found on washing machines and other electrical appliances across the European Union and will look familiar to anyone who has recently tried to sell or buy property in the UK, as it is already part of the much criticized Se requires the Home Information Package (HIP) when a property is marketed for sale. The EPC gives a rating (from A to G) of the energy efficiency of the house or apartment that is rented, taking into account factors such as the insulation of the attic or the wall with an air chamber, double glazing, the age of the boiler, etc. It also provides a rating of the rental property’s potential energy efficiency if several recommended improvements were made (such as insulating the loft or installing double glazing).

Last fall, I put my house on the market and, with great reluctance, paid for a HIP as I am legally required to. The house did not sell and the HIP is now expired and has gone into my recycling bin. The EPC report told me the initial fact that I could save money on heating by insulating my loft and installing energy efficient light bulbs. Shiny. Who would have guessed? I too would have thrown the EPC away, but now I am renting the house and have given it to my bewildered tenants.

So what exactly is the point of the new owners EPC for rental property? Is it for the benefit of the tenants? Well, not really, no. Tenants want to know how big the rooms are, whether they can walk to the train station without being mugged, and most importantly, whether there is room to negotiate the rent. Most tenants rent short term, one or two years max, and in more than 10 years of renting I have never been asked anything about the energy efficiency of my properties. The fact is that 99.9% of renters don’t give a damn if they get an E-rated property.

So is it to the benefit of the owners? Well, it would be if it made a rental property more desirable so that (a) it would be easier to attract tenants or (b) you could charge a higher rent, or (c) both. That’s a no then.

Well, maybe it benefits the environment? Uh… not again. It may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s necessary to state the obvious. The EPC doesn’t actually insulate the loft or seal the windows; it’s just a piece of paper. It has no benefit for the environment. In fact, the hundreds of EPC inspectors who drive across the country contribute to carbon emissions and my HIP was certainly not printed on recycled paper.

Fine, but surely an EPC benefits the environment indirectly by making property owners aware of how their properties are wasting energy. Well, call me cynical, but I don’t think most landlords care, since it’s the tenants who pay the heating bills.

To add to this, a large proportion of UK homes are Victorian and built without cavity walls, making cavity wall insulation physically impossible. Similarly, it is also undesirable to rip out single-glazed Victorian sash windows to replace them with UPVC double-glazed units. True, wooden double-glazed sheet replacements are available, but at enormous cost (I recently paid £1000 per window). And, while loft insulation may be a possibility, to state the obvious again, it can only be installed if you have a loft. That excludes all apartments except those on the top floor and most properties with flat roofs. Joe Investor, who bought apartment 243 on the fourth floor of a 12-storey apartment block in Leeds, has no loft or electricity to install the cavity wall insulation. His lease probably also prevents him from changing the windows. So, understandably, he would be quite angry at having to fork out for an EPC.

The idea of ​​convincing all of us to insulate our homes and use less energy is admirable. But consider this example. EPCs cost between £70 and £100, sometimes more. I recently installed loft insulation in my own house and it cost me £54 in total for 6 rolls of insulation. I assembled them in an afternoon. It’s not a nice job, I admit, and if you pay someone to do it for you, it will cost you a little more. But my point is this: isn’t it better to spend £100 to insulate the loft than to produce a piece of paper that tells you the blindingly obvious?