Yes, folks. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the rental water after acquiring the latest batch of obligatory certificates, licences and such like, here comes yet another one. From October next year, landlords will be required to have a “green” certificate rating their property’s energy consumption. These are the same compulsory energy performance certificates included in the home information packs that will be required for anyone selling their home from next month.

So, is this going to be an utter pain in the neck? I call Malcolm Harrison, of the Association of Residential Letting Agents. “Actually, this all was announced by Brussels back in 2001,” he says. “What will happen is that all rented property will be banded, just as white goods are now.”

Do you have to have a fresh certificate every time your property is up for rent? Mercifully not, says Harrison. “All certificates will be valid for 10 years. We don’t yet know how much it will cost, but we think it will be about £200.”

Harrison thinks that the impact on landlords will be minimal, in that you won’t be able to “fail” as such: the certificate will merely state where your property lies on an energy-performance scale. “What it will do, however, is provide another way of getting property covered on a bureaucratic level, for Brussels,” he says. He does concede, however, that it may be of use to tenants in determining what kind of bills they might face.

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What, then, will the green certificate be testing? Harrison runs through a few of the elements the energy-performance bods will be testing: cavity walls, floors, loft insulation, double glazing, boilers, radiators, thermostats, hot water and low-energy lighting.

Some landlords have taken a rather dim view of all this, because they sense that the scheme will eventually end up as a mandate for action – despite denials from the Department for Communities and Local Government, which is implementing the certificates.

Bruce Ritchie is the managing director of Residential Land, a giant landowner with 1,100 flats in prime central London, more than half of which are in listed buildings. “We won’t be able to put in sealed units,” he splutters. “Or reinsulate floors, or put in double glazing. You cannot cavity-insulate a stucco-fronted period building. We will run into trouble with both English Heritage and the demands of this green legislation. It is highly confusing – and, furthermore, is the certificate of any use to an incoming tenant?”

What about tenants who would like to know about the energy efficiency of the place they are moving into, I ask? “It is obvious that a listed period building is less efficient than a new-build. It’s yet more irrelevant bureaucracy. In central London, you should deal with the buildings that exist, not criticise them.”

David Salvi, the director of Hurford Salvi Carr estate agency in the City, agrees. “We have no issue with the production of certificates, although in my view they are a complete waste of time,” he says. “A tenant will go for an old historic house, which may have a poor rating over a new-build flat every time. I think the issue is what the government ends up doing with the information that is being collected. I don’t see how it can force landlords to spend money updating their properties, but that is my fear.”

Bring on the green lobby, says Robin Lawton, who owns 14 houses and flats in Southampton, and a flash apartment in central London. “We need to get green issues on the agenda, and while my head and certainly my pocket resists the introduction of these certificates, my heart is behind it,” he says. “Don’t you think it is right to properly insulate your properties?” Yes, but this certificate isn’t about enforcing change, I retort. Come, come, says Lawton, it’s bound to happen. “Once you have the information, the pressure will certainly come on.”

Don’t forget the tenant in all this, urges Bryony Doran, who owns 25 houses in Sheffield, half of which are rented out to students. Some landlords might pooh-pooh the thought that a tenant might have an active interest in the energy-performance rating of their prospective property, but Doran says tenants are always on the lookout for cheaper bills.

“My part of the rental market is highly competitive, and I believe your property should be up to standard. My tenants are concerned about levels of gas and electricity use in their properties. One actually turned off the central heating and installed electric heaters last winter, because he believed it would be cheaper. Until he got a bill for £500, that is.”

Of course, the fly in an otherwise flawless ointment is that the performance of one crucial element has been left out of all this: that of the tenant. “This will make no difference to the market whatsoever,” says one lettings agent, who declines to be named. “Your house or flat could have a fantastic rating, but then you let it to someone who leaves all the lights on all night, or his mobile on charge for a week. He will say, “I must remember to switch off the lights” – and it will last for a month.”

buytolet@sunday-times.co.uk

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