Mar

How are landlords to upgrade homes after scrapping of Green Homes Grant?

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Landlords have been left with a ‘green gap’ of finding up to £10,000 per property to meet new energy performance targets after the government scrapped its Green Homes Grant scheme.

Online mortgage broker Property Master acknowledges that the troubled scheme was difficult to access, made it hard to find the correctly registered tradespeople and suffered from a cumbersome process to redeem vouchers, however, it says landlords deserve a replacement.

Chief executive Angus Stewart (pictured) adds: “Landlords could be forgiven for thinking the new energy regulations in the absence of government support is just an extra backdoor tax on the private rented sector.

“For many this will be a squeeze too far on their finances and they may well choose this moment to exit the market which will reduce the number of homes for rent.”

The government has set an ambitious target as part of its Net Zero greenhouse gases by 2050 programme of raising the energy performance certificate for all new tenancies in the private rented sector to a C or above by 2025. By 2028, this requirement will extend to all private rented sector properties.

About 67% of private rented properties in England and Wales – 3.2 million in total – are currently a band D or below.

The £2 billion Green Homes Grant scheme was only launched in September 2020 but will close on Wednesday. Up to £5,000 per property was available, no more than two thirds of the cost of the work done.

To date, only about 60,0000 of the 600,000 available vouchers have been taken up to fund improvements such as cavity wall insulation and draught proofing.

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