Scotland extends the deadline for responses to the Occupied Homes Consultation.

Last December the Scottish Government established targets for owner occupied homes through its consultation ‘Energy Efficient Scotland- Improving energy efficiency in owner occupied homes’. The headline is a bold move to ensure that all homes sold in Scotland from 2024, and onwards, have a ‘C’ rating on their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). Elmhurst has spent time reviewing the proposals made within this consultation; we published our draft response and also had a great conference at Hampden Park focussing on this subject (amongst others).

Within the consultation the Scottish Government states:

“We are proposing that energy efficiency standards should be introduced for owner-occupied housing, and that they should be legally binding.”

“We said all homes should reach at least an Energy Efficiency Rating of Band C, where it is technically feasible and cost effective to do.”

The Headlines of the Consultation

A legally binding standard will ensure all owner-occupied homes have similar standards that private and social landlords have to adhere to.

The new standard will apply at the point of sale or the point of major renovation (More than 25% of the surface of the building envelope undergoes renovation or the renovation is higher than 25% of the value of the building, excluding the value of the land upon which the building is situated).

While not all properties will be able to meet an EPC band C, it should be required to get as close as reasonably possible before it can apply for an abeyance.

Summary

Elmhurst has taken some time to fully analyse the document and created a draft response to the consultation to encourage debate amongst members. We also heard from Patrick McCurdie from Scottish Government at our Scottish Conference, who gave more details around the questions set out in the consultation.

Stuart Fairlie Technical & Operations Director at Elmhurst commented “overall, Elmhurst welcomes Scotland’s vision for the proposed changes and believe it is a big step towards improving Scottish homes, making them warmer, cheaper to run and improving their overall energy efficiency.”

Elmhurst is keen to hear the feedback from its expert members in order to develop a thorough and detailed final response to this consultation. We would advocate for members to respond, but alternatively please let us know your thoughts and we will attempt to add these to our final response.”

View Elmhurst's draft consultation response here. 

You can view the consultation here. 

Article published: 23rd March 2020