SNP plan to outlaw sale of houses with gas boilers

MattMattMattUK

BungalowBel said:

So someone is not at liberty to sell their house if it doesn't meet these standards, even if someone is willing to buy it?  Communists here we come.

That is not communism, it is authoritarian, the two are different although they can and do overlap. 

user1977

MattMattMattUK said:

theartfullodger said:

So English government insisting on at least  minimum EPC for private rentals has been likewise terrible ? 

There is no English government. There is also a huge difference between requiring an EPC for rentals and requiring one to be able to sell a property. 

Correct, there is a UK government, though where they're trying to legislate in respect of something which only affects England, only MPs for English constituencies would be voting.

Herzlos

If something like this were to come in, it'd likely have a huge lead time and some element of grandfathering involved. It'd almost certainly not make any houses unsellable overnight.

I'm sure there will always be some edge cases where someone who ignores all the warnings gets stuck in a house they can't sell but can't afford to upgrade, but even then I'm sure someone will provide credit to do the installation in exchange for money when the house sells, like a really short term equity release.

It'll then presumable save a lot of energy and a lot of money in the long run.

ProDave

I have been saying for a long time that someone has to come up with a plan to upgrade all the old housing stock and wondered how that would happen and who would pay.  And until that is known, I would not personally buy a house worse than EPC C unless it was genuinely cheap to reflect the work needed.

Well it now seems the SNP's plan it the owner must pay for all the work, if they are to be able to sell their house, and there is only talk of very small grants that might cover a tiny percentage of the work needed.

housebuyer143

That's great isn't it. Talk about taking away people's choice and forcing people into a bad situation. 

"I'm in a bad situation and can't afford my house, but now I can't sell it because it's not an EPC C and I can't afford to increase the rating". 

housebuyer143

user1977 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

theartfullodger said:

So English government insisting on at least  minimum EPC for private rentals has been likewise terrible ? 

There is no English government. There is also a huge difference between requiring an EPC for rentals and requiring one to be able to sell a property. 

Correct, there is a UK government, though where they're trying to legislate in respect of something which only affects England, only MPs for English constituencies would be voting.

Which seems completely fair, but yet Scotland and Wales are completely against 🤔 

Gavin83

BJV said:

I know that we all have to try to be energy aware and focus on climate change but the cost alone is massive.

I actually think the elephant in the room is that most people just don't care about climate change or are even actively against green initiatives. We've seen evidence of that just this week, with an environmental policy being blamed for Labour losing a by-election. We're seeing both the main parties in this country rolling back climate based policy and watering down their commitments. I certainly wouldn't be confident any green policies will happen on time or even at all.

People mention how important EPC ratings are on houses. While I agree in principle I think the truth of the matter is most people don't care and completely disregard the EPC. I expect there's a lot of people that don't know the EPC rating of their own house. It also doesn't help that the EPC rating system is wooly and inconsistent at the moment.

In terms of the headline of this thread I'm pretty confident it'll never happen.

Divorcing_Dad

We're in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis where according to Crashy anywhere between 10 and 50% of people will have their houses repossessed, because they can no longer afford the mortgage.

Scottish Government's answer? Well, you can't even repossess a house, because the bank isn't allowed to sell it without an EPC of C or above.

And you want to try getting yourself out of the pickle by selling the house yourself and say moving back in the parents? Yeah, forget that.

I'm all for forcing environmental improvements, but forcing people and creating "Environmental prisoners" isn't really the answer, particularly in today's economic uncertainties.

user1977

ProDave said:

Well it now seems the SNP's plan it the owner must pay for all the work, if they are to be able to sell their house, and there is only talk of very small grants that might cover a tiny percentage of the work needed.

There's "only talk" of the policy coming into force at all, I'm not sure why people are assuming it would be enacted in a completely impractical way.

I'm not even sure whether it's feasible for e.g. many listed buildings to be improved sufficiently to make the grade.

ComicGeek

If you have a system that is based on achieving a specific rating, then the calculation process needs to be clear and to let people work out to how achieve it.

Playing around with the EPC calculations (as suggested in the article) to artificially make heat pumps look better than gas doesn't help anyone - no one can plan for the future or make long term decisions if they keep moving the goal posts.

What we need is a clear long term strategy, with suitable funding to help people - the problem is the price of electricity, as who is going to make the change from gas to electricity at the moment?! I'm currently doing some work in my garden and at the same time installing ducting to a future heat pump position. The government needs to understand that people need time to prepare for change, they can't just do things at the last minute - successful integration for heat pumps may need dozens of small tasks over a number of years, I've spent 12 years slowly getting our house ready for the future!