The Government department with responsibility for EPC's has finally made a move to tighten up the requirements so that the cowboys will find it harder to continue their bad practice.
There have been so many anecdotal stories of "the assessor was only there for 10 minutes" or "they didn't go up in the loft despite there being a loft ladder". These assessors have saved time on surveys by using the "unknown" or "no access" options on the survey form, so that the software made a default assessment based on the property age. Most of the EPC's they generated were almost identical.
Not only was this dishonest practice, but it meant that those householders who had made energy saving improvements to their home weren't getting the right score and banding for their property. This puts them at a disadvantage when selling or renting their house - if a house appears to be more expensive to heat than an otherwise very similar house, then surely anyone renting or buying would opt for the cheaper to run house.
As energy prices get higher the cost of heating a home is going to become more important. It's nice to move into a house with a modern bathroom or kitchen, but then if it's not to your taste you may opt to change it anyway, which is a one-off capital expense. Whereas a poorly insulated home means that your heating bills are unnecessarily high year on year, this expense doesn't contribute to the cosmetic improvement of your house, and lots of the heat is just leaking to the outside - you may as well burn money.
A properly assessed EPC will give you the information you need to choose well in terms of energy efficiency of a home and how it can be improved further.
Even though the cost of EPC's has really dropped some of us still strive to provide a really professional service and produce high quality EPC's.
So CLG please carry on getting tough on the cowboys and introduce some credibility to EPC'S.
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