The government needs to be more ambitious in pushing its energy efficiency agenda for the UK's rental housing, landlords say.
All new and renewed private sector tenancies since April have required that the rental property has an Energy Performance Certificate rating of at least 'E'.
The government has announced it is looking to increase this performance target to a rating of 'C' by 2030.
However, the Residential Landlords' Association (RLA) is now urging the government to be more ambitious when it comes to encouraging energy efficiencies in the housing sector.
The RLA says all private rental homes should be as energy efficient as is possible.
RLA says landlords need to be encouraged
To encourage more work to improve energy efficiencies, the RLA says landlords need to be encouraged to carry out the work under the energy performance banner and this work should be considered as a tax deductible repair.
The organisation says that by doing so, the government will be encouraging a culture of landlords continuously improving their properties rather than having landlords meet a set target and leaving them there.
The RLA has carried out research which reveals that 37% of landlords who have a property rated as F or G are unable to afford bringing their property up to an E rating.
They say that, on average, it would cost a landlord nearly £5,800 to bring their property up to the required energy standard.
Previously, the RLA has found that 61% of landlords say that a tax relief for energy efficiency work would encourage them to improve the efficiency of their property.
The RLA's policy director David Smith says: “We should be more ambitious for private rental homes and energy efficient houses are good for landlords and tenants. It's why we should use taxation far better than we do currently to encourage a culture of continuous energy improvements."
London rents begin recovery
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that average rents in London have exceeded £1,600 per month for the first time.
The figures from the HomeLet Rental Index show that rents have risen by 3.3% on average year-on-year to reach £1,615 per calendar month.
This follows a prolonged phase of decline and highlights that the supply of rental homes is dropping with landlords leaving the private rental sector because of recent tax changes.
The average rent across the UK for July was £937 per month which is a rise of 1.3% over the same period last year.
