Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, on the face of it, the regulations before the Committee are as simple as they come. However, my noble friend the Minister will recall from his previous encounter, over business rates relief for sport and charities, with me and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who will of course be opening the bowling for the Liberal Democrats, that what appears to be the simplest of balls can lead to a Minister being nutmegged at the crease. While we hope that that will not happen today, I intend to press the Minister on a few key issues relating to these fees. I thank the Energy Saving Trust and all those who have offered advice on this issue.

I also draw on my experience as a resident in Ayrshire, Scotland. For while, as my noble friend the Minister has said, Scotland operates its own energy performance of buildings register and is not covered by the draft regulations, I believe there are important read-across policy implications which are pursued in Scotland and which the Committee may reflect on in the context of these regulations.

As the Minister has said, this is a straightforward SI relating to the statutory fees charged when data is registered for energy performance certificates—EPCs—display energy certificates and air conditioning inspection reports for England and Wales. Fees, as he confirmed, are applied to the two classes of data registration, covering domestic and non-domestic properties. There are significant benefits in having the energy performance certificate register and the service it provides, including readily available access to information and data. I strongly support any initiative that provides easy-to-access information and data on the land and built environment at cost.

However, there are likely to be considerable changes to building regulations. It is important that these changes are provided as far in advance as possible, so that contracts can also be amended as far in advance of any proposed changes. This would improve the lodgement process and minimise the requirement for the Minister to return to this Committee in future years over fees. Would it also be possible for government to consider sending registered EPCs by email rather than having to log into a labyrinthine database to retrieve them, as this can be inadequate and time-consuming? If so, this would provide value for the money spent. We need constantly to review and improve the system to which these fees apply.

Policies could be implemented in England that have made a real difference in Scotland and, indeed, Wales, such as the existence of a focused, directly funded scheme for installing energy efficiency measures and efficient heating for fuel-poor homeowners and private renters. I remain convinced, as I have previously proposed in the House, that this policy would be more efficiently delivered centrally. That said, in the context of these regulations the question as to how frequently charges will be reviewed and revised is important, which brings me to certainty. This is important because it bears on the frequency of registering for EPCs for properties in England and Wales. Governments can offer two very important things for energy efficiency measures to work: money, of course, but also certainty.

To develop the supply chain and to unlock investment from the private sector, a defined and adhered to long-term policy framework is needed. The biggest issue when talking to the supply chain is always the chopping and changing of energy efficiency schemes. While the nature and detail of schemes matter, that they should not be changed frequently is almost as important as what those actual details are. The supply chain can adapt to and thrive on most variants of energy efficiency schemes; what it cannot deal with is uncertainty and discontinuity.

Scotland and, to a lesser extent, Wales have long-term energy efficiency policies and programmes. In this vein, one of the key components of a stable policy environment is to make energy efficiency, particularly domestic energy efficiency, an infrastructure priority. The Scottish Government have done this and reaped the benefits.

Although individual energy efficiency installations are obviously relatively small in scale, the energy efficiency of buildings is a key parameter in the overall efficiency and productivity of the economy, and the aggregate costs and benefits are of major infrastructure scale. Raising domestic energy efficiency to EPC rating C would generate 150,000 jobs, have a budget of the same magnitude as HS2 and would save the energy equivalent of six Hinkley Points. It thus makes sense for energy efficiency to be an infrastructure priority, and once it is, this drives investment and policy certainty and sends key signals to the supply chain.

While I accept that a modest reduction in fees is now possible, I question whether the reduction is not exceeded by the duplication, time input, form changing and system adjustment for such a small change for domestic properties simply because the Government have invested in new cloud-based digital platforms and moved away from the fixed hardware model that has been in place, as my noble friend the Minister said, for the past 13 years.

A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee said that the Government have no plans to meet climate change targets, two years after setting them in law. That is what is stated in the report. The UK’s stock of 27 million houses includes some of the worst insulated and least energy-efficient homes in Europe. I share the views of Members of another place that I hope the Government will take the example of what is proposed in this related SI to move further with the agenda and deliver a big improvement in work to meet our climate change targets by making homes in the UK warm, dry and affordable to heat.

Should there not be some consideration of linking the fees to improvements in the future homes standards to be introduced in 2025, so that sellers can make a marketing point that there might be no charge where homes are at least 75% more carbon-efficient than when they were purchased? Correspondingly, would these charges not be an opportunity to charge more for those homeowners and businesses who fail to meet targets? They could effectively become a financial penalty and reward scheme. It would provide an opportunity for everyone concerned to have skin in the game, rather than the less efficient mechanism of being urged to take action by government. This would add further impetus to the sector.

With these suggestions now tabled, I hope my noble friend will present a defensive straight bat in response to what I appreciate may have been six difficult balls to defend. We know that he can do no more than play a defensive shot today—wild attempted sweeps to six would be a fatal error—since the last thing the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I want to do is to take the wicket of such an impressive and erudite Minister.