The Green Party wants to see a mandatory register of private landlords who comply with the law on Energy Performance Certificates, and has also called for a ban on rental properties with poor energy ratings reports the RLA.
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas wants it to be made illegal to rent out properties with an EPC rating of less than E. She is also calling for a mandatory register of private landlords.
Lucas said that the Government’s Green Deal will not do enough to tackle poorly insulated private rented homes.
Speaking at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s south-east conference, she said there should be a ‘street-by-street’ programme of energy efficiency, to ensure affordable improvements were made to every home in the country.
She said it was a “social and environmental scandal” that people are living in cold, damp, unhealthy homes.
However, consumer bodies have discovered that tenants do not care about the energy efficiency of their properties.
According to Consumer Focus, just 18% of people said that seeing an EPC had influenced their decision to buy or rent a particular property, and fewer than half had seen an EPC before signing an agreement.
