Moved by
That the Grand Committee do consider the Energy Performance of
Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling
Up, Housing & Communities () (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move the regulations. This statutory
instrument was laid before the House on Monday 31 January 2022
under paragraph 12(1) of Schedule 7 to the European Union
(Withdrawal) Act 2018. It was debated and moved in the Commons
Second Delegated Legislation Committee on Tuesday 8 March.
Mirroring legislation has been prepared for data registered
against properties in Northern Ireland and was considered by the
Assembly, also on 8 March. Scotland operates its own energy
performance of buildings register and is not covered by this
instrument.
This is probably one of the most straightforward statutory
instruments that noble Lords will be asked to consider this year.
It is almost exactly 12 months ago that I introduced and we last
debated a similar measure, and last year the Committee dubbed
that SI
“as simple as they come”.—[Official Report, 18/3/21; col. GC
9.]
The instrument relates to the statutory fees that are charged
when data is registered for energy performance certificates,
display energy certificates and air conditioning inspection
reports for properties in England and Wales. Fees are applied to
two classes of data registration covering domestic and
non-domestic properties. This instrument proposes to reduce fees
from £1.64 to £1.50 when data is lodged for domestic premises and
from £1.89 to £1.70 for non-domestic premises.
Fees charged for data registrations in England and Wales were
last adjusted nearly one year ago. A significant reduction in
fees was possible at that time because government had invested in
a new, cloud-based digital platform and had moved away from the
fixed hardware model, run on concession contracts, that had been
in place since 2008. In the last 12 months, contractual costs for
building the service have fallen out of the model, which means
that we have the opportunity to extend last year’s reductions
further.
The new EPB register became operational in September 2020 and has
been managed in-house since then. Significantly, it passed the
digital service assessment in December 2021 and is the first
citizen-facing digital service in my department to be hosted on
the GOV.UK platform. It is also one of very few government
digital services to publish performance statistics. The register
now carries approximately 28 million energy certificates across
all types, which includes more than 2 million data lodgements
since September 2020, which we are receiving at a rate of around
155,000 each month. Importantly, by managing this cloud-based
service in-house, we have delivered efficiencies and reduced the
overall burden on public resources.
This instrument builds on the fee reductions we introduced last
year. New fee rates set out in this regulation will allow costs
of operating the Energy Performance of Buildings Register service
to continue to be met. We aim for the register service to be cost
neutral, without profiteering, but we do not expect taxpayers to
subsidise a loss. Costs of the service, and the fees we propose,
have been calculated in line with government policy and tested
with stakeholders in the property energy profession.
Officials in my department have engaged with officials from the
Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh
Government, and all have agreed that, given uncertainty in the
property market, recent movements in interest rates and higher
inflation, the modest reduction proposed today represents the
most practical way to amend fees and ensure that the register is
run on as close to a cost-neutral basis as possible.
The small differentiation between fees for domestic and
non-domestic lodgements reflects technical differences between
the classes of data, but it is now significantly smaller than
historically.
The Committee will recall that the United Kingdom aims to bring
greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Heating and
powering buildings currently accounts for 40% of the UK’s total
energy usage. We must therefore ensure that buildings are
constructed to high standards of energy efficiency.
In December last year, we implemented an uplift to Part L of the
building regulations to improve conservation of fuel and power.
When it comes into force this summer, new homes and new
non-domestic buildings will be expected to deliver 30% and 27%
fewer carbon emissions respectively. We are still on track to
develop the full technical specification for the future homes
strategy and the future building strategy, which we will consult
on in 2023.
The Energy Performance of Buildings Register is a key tool in
supporting our aspirations for improved energy efficiency. It
holds valuable information about the energy performance of
buildings. We want homeowners, commercial building owners and
occupiers to improve the energy efficiency of their
buildings.
Energy certificates improve market information, so that consumers
can make informed choices. An energy performance certificate is
needed whenever a property is built, sold or let. At a glance, a
consumer searching for a new home or for commercial premises can
determine how efficient a property might be, while an owner can
consider recommendations for how they might improve the energy
efficiency of their property.
To conclude, these regulations serve a very specific purpose: to
reduce the statutory fees charged when data is registered for
domestic and non-domestic energy performance certificates,
display energy certificates and air conditioning inspection
reports. Over the two classes of fee, reducing domestic data
registration fees from £1.64 to £1.50, and non-domestic data
registration fees from £1.89 to £1.70, extends the savings that
we introduced last year.
Colleagues in Northern Ireland are introducing their own
mirroring legislation to ensure coherence between different parts
of the United Kingdom that use the same register. This will
ensure that fees charged for Northern Ireland data lodgements are
in line with those for England and Wales.
I hope colleagues will join me in supporting the draft
regulations. I commend them to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees () (CB)
I warn noble Lords that there is likely to be a series of
Divisions in the Chamber quite soon, so prepare to be
interrupted.
(LD)
My Lords, I spent many sleepless nights reading this through in
detail, but I must admit it was time well spent.
(PC)
It sent you to sleep.
(LD)
I will keep off that subject.
I congratulate the Government on implementing a computer system
that means it is actually cheaper to do something—perhaps the
department could speak to the National Health Service about its
implementation of digital systems, which could be better.
I am pleased that the Minister went through the slightly broader
issues of home efficiency. This is a big subject and I am not
going to speak for long on it, but I need to talk about it a
little, and I welcome the fact that he did. I recognise that
making our homes and buildings more generally energy efficient—we
have 29 million of them in the UK and 2 million commercial
buildings—is not an easy task. We all recognise that. But it is
something that has to be done to meet net zero.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees () (CB)
My Lords, there is a Division in the House. The Committee will
suspend, in theory for 10 minutes, but if noble Lords were able
to vote more quickly than that and indicate to me that they have
voted successfully, we can recommence more quickly.
4.39pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
4.41pm
(LD)
I was reminding the Grand Committee that we have 29 million
houses in the country and one of the least energy-efficient
housing stocks in Europe. Half of them were built before 1956,
and a fifth of them before 1919—I am a proud owner of one of
them, which operates off oil heating because it is off the grid,
like many.
As we all know, we have a huge challenge at the moment with
heating bills. The message from the Climate Change Committee,
which looked at this recently and produced its report a couple of
weeks ago, was to plead with the Government to get on with it.
The task is huge and we need to get on with it now. There was a
government commitment of, I think, £8.26 billion for 2026. I
should be interested to hear how much we have actually managed to
spend of that; most of the public money is obviously going on
social housing.
We should not just spend money on big nuclear power stations—I
shall try not to get into that argument. Of the estimated £18
billion of private and public money that is actually required
each year up to 2050 to get through this problem, there is £5
billion per annum savings on it. It is around that.
My colleagues and friends in Denmark have the same energy price
increases. Are they concerned about it? Not particularly, because
the bills are so low. Why is that? Because of the energy
performance of buildings in Scandinavia.
I plead with the Minister to push very strongly to get back to
the zero-carbon homes target—I should be interested to understand
whether the 2025 deadline for heat pumps in new homes will be a
legal requirement—and get on with the programme.
That is a more incoherent speech from me than normal, but this is
an important issue and one which I recognise is not easy to
solve.
(Lab)
My Lords, I cannot argue with much of what the noble Lord just
said on energy performance and energy efficiency. I visited
Sweden a number of years ago and was impressed by the way
Scandinavians do so much right.
We know about the statutory instrument and about the fees and
charges. The reduction in fees is clearly welcome and the
Official Opposition support these changes.
I have just a couple of questions for the Minister. Since these
regulations relate to England and Wales only, what recent
discussions has the department held with the devolved Government
of Scotland and the devolved Administration of Northern Ireland
on related fees? Can the Minister explain the difference in fees
between the two classes of data registration covering domestic
and non-domestic properties? Finally, given that fees charged for
data registrations in England and Wales were last adjusted nearly
a year ago, why are they being changed again?
4.45pm
(Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for a short, sharp and focused
debate. It is appreciated. The fees have changed again a year
later because there is essentially a dividend around an IT
project, as the noble Lord, , said; we do not want to
profiteer or make a profit, but the cost of running the service
has gone down. That comes in the form of lower prices for
consumers and commercial users. I think I mentioned in my speech
why there is a slight difference between non-domestic and
domestic rates, as noble Lords will see in Hansard.
In response to the noble Lord, , I understand that there is
an energy company obligation between 2022 and 2026, estimated at
£1 billion per year, to enable poorer, more vulnerable households
to get more energy efficient. That is a BEIS policy, and I am not
an expert on it.
My property interests are declared in the register, as I am sure
the noble Lord’s are. It is a difficulty that, the older the
property—I own a Queen Anne cottage—the harder it is to hit the
net-zero target; there is a real issue around older properties,
even if there is real resolve from the homeowner to be carbon
neutral over time. That is a point well made. Brains across
government are thinking across different departments about how we
embrace that challenge. One way is to set standards, and the
future homes standard is critical to do that for new build, which
is again only a certain proportion of the existing stock. The
question then is how we retrofit and deal with the stock we have
in this country.
However, I think we are going beyond EPC price ratings, which are
essentially good news for the consumer and people who pay these
bills. I take the points from noble Lords that it is good to see
an IT project working well, being managed in-house and done
efficiently. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Motion agreed.
