The new green proposal that could make your UK home unsellable

Source:

https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/the-new-proposal-that-could-make-your-home-unsellable/ 

"Last week, the government’s Climate Change Committee published its ‘Sixth Carbon Budget’ recommending what it thinks the government needs to do in order to meet its target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

Much comment revolved around the proposed ban on new gas boilers from 2033, after which homes would have to be heated either by electric heat pump or possibly by hydrogen boilers, should the government decide to repurpose the existing gas distribution network for hydrogen.

But there is a far bigger nasty concealed in the document that was hardly reported:   

a proposal that the sale of properties be banned from 2028 unless they score at least a grade C in an energy performance certificate (EPC).

This has serious implications because millions of British homes will not reach this level and cannot be brought up to this standard at any reasonable cost. 

(for my home) I could spend over £10,000 and still I wouldn’t be allowed to sell my house and nobody would be allowed to buy it. 

 

Not only that, the Climate Change Committee recommends that mortgages shouldn’t be allowed on homes with a EPC rating of less than ‘C’ by 2033. 

 

So you won’t be able to sell, or to have a mortgage on your home. What are you supposed to do then?

There are nine million homes in Britain which, like mine, have solid walls. It is going to be virtually impossible to bring many of them up to a ‘C’ rating unless their walls are insulated. 

You can do that ‘cheaply’ by stick insulation on the inside or outside, but even so that will cost – in the case of a three bedroom home – between £7000 and £13,000 ...

... If your house wasn’t built with a damp proof course – which applies to just about any house built before the 1920s – you could be trapping in damp. 

More realistically, to achieve a grade ‘C’ rating you would have to undertake a complete refurbishment, stripping the property back to the bricks and starting again. For millions of homeowners, that is not an option."