Leading firms call for stamp duty to be linked to EPC performance
The EEIG says homeowners and landlords should be urged to upgrade properties by charging less and less stamp duty the better its EPC.
A coalition of leading UK organisations and businesses has written an open letter to Chancellor Rishi Sunak call on him to have EPC ratings linked to stamp duty in a bid to encourage homeowners and landlords to invest in home insulation and protect against rising bills.
The Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group (EEIG), made up of industry, businesses and charities, says it wants Sunak to support its Energy Saving Stamp Duty Incentive.
This would urge people to either buy a more energy-efficient home or incentivise them to make it more energy efficient afterwards by installing insulation or a heat pump. Households would be charged a lower level of stamp duty for doing so.
This would, if implemented, also help reform stamp duty by the back door and help free up the market from the ‘tax shackles’ that many industry commentators bemoan.
Encouraged
Homeowners are being encouraged to get their properties to EPC band C by 2035, while – if the new energy efficiency bill gets the green light – landlords will have to meet the target by December 2025 on new tenancies and on all rented properties by December 2028.
There is mounting concern that this could spark many landlords to quit the sector.
The EEIG says that with so many millions of homes to retrofit, its concept of a long-term structural incentive is necessary to engage and prepare the market, and it believes this could prove more effective and simpler than a large-scale, short-term, costly grant programme – while also being ‘revenue neutral’.
Spokesman David Adams says: “Stamp duty would be calculated then nudged up and down around a neutral point based on the energy performance of that dwelling, so the better performing the home from an energy perspective, the lower the stamp duty paid.”
