(Bloomberg) -- The UK will require landlords to improve the energy efficiency of homes across the country by the end of this decade, the energy minister said Monday.
The new mandates will apply to private and publicly rented housing, and should lift about 1 million families out of fuel poverty, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband said at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
They will require rental properties to have an energy performance rating of at least C by 2030, an improvement from the current requirement of E on a scale of A to G, according to a statement.
“We all know that the poorest people in our country often live in cold, drafty homes,” Miliband said. “We will end this injustice.”
Soaring energy bills in recent years, following a reduction in natural gas flows from Russia to Europe, contributed to the cost-of-living crisis in Britain. While energy prices have receded, they’re still far higher than they were before then.
Increasing insulation is one of the ways landlords can make their properties more efficient and help tenants cut their winter bills. However, those methods require significant investment up front.
“UK properties are some of the worst insulated in Europe, with millions of Brits currently condemned to living in cold, damp, moldy homes they can’t afford to heat,” Caroline Simpson, spokesperson for the Warm This Winter coalition of charities, said in a statement.
The National Residential Landlords Association supports improved energy efficiency, but members need financial support to make the required investments, policy director Chris Norris said.
“The sector has some of the oldest, and hardest to improve, properties in the UK’s housing stock,” Norris said.
In a document published later Monday, the government said it will decide on the funding of grants to pay for insulation in public housing during an upcoming spending review. An allocation of £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) decided by the previous government was removed from the planning document.
The program offers as much as £7,500 per home to increase performance ratings, with a goal to reach as many as 1.2 million dwellings that are currently lacking. If each residence used the maximum allocation, it would cost about £9 billion.
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