Green Deal - The End? Wednesday, 29th July 2015

On July 23rd the Government announced that they would no longer be funding the Green Deal Finance Company (GDFC). The Green Deal Finance Company has announced that it will cease accepting applications for new Green Deal Plans with immediate effect. This is to ensure that sufficient funds exist to support those applications that have been lodged in recent weeks and are already being processed.

This has interesting implications for The Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) Regulations 2015, whereby “sub-standard” properties need to be brought up to an Energy Performance Indicator of E or better on their EPC. The big caveat here is that a sub-standard property CAN be let, or an existing tenancy allowed to continue, if all "relevant energy efficiency improvements" have been made or none can be made to it. The Green Deal Assessment was a way of determining “relevant” measures.

Whilst there were clearly major issues with the Green Deal arrangement, this announcement follows a succession of environmental policies being scrapped since the current government came to power, from the ending of onshore windfarm subsidies to curbs on solar subsidies and the dropping of regulations to make all new homes ‘zero carbon’ from next year.

So watch this space. It will be much more difficult for the government to “remove” legislation from the Statute book than to simply cease funding the GDFC. However, any remaining Green Deal assessors skills could end up very much in demand. From April 1 2016 tenants living in F- and G-rated homes will be able to request energy efficiency improvements with landlords who are legally bound to act within the following two years. These requests must be accompanied by a Recommendation Report (from SAP or SBEM) or a report prepared by a surveyor which could see demands for these services rise.