Renters still face living in draughty homes – even if their landlord is the King

You’d think if you rented a home on an estate owned by none other than the royal family, you would at least be guaranteed a well insulated place to live that doesn’t cost a fortune to heat each winter. 

But an investigation by The Guardian found more than 100 rented homes on the inherited royal estates of King Charles and Prince William fail to meet the current legal minimum energy standards for landlords. 

An energy performance certificate (EPC) scores a home based on its energy efficiency, reviewing a range of factors including insulation, wall construction and heating and hot water systems. Currently, it is illegal to rent out a home that is below an EPC E (A being the highest energy efficiency rating). However, the government is raising this minimum standard meaning all private rented homes must meet EPC C by 2030. After this deadline, if a landlord rents out a home that is rated below this metric and is not exempt for any reason, they will face a hefty fine. 

For the Royals, The Guardian estimates making improvements to their housing stock to meet the new standard could cost around £10 million. But they aren’t the only landlords who will have to make significant improvements to the energy efficiency of the homes they own over the next few years. 

According to the 2024-25 English Housing Survey, just over half of private rented homes currently meet EPC C, with over a third in Band D and nearly one in 10 in Band E. On the other hand, nearly three quarters of social homes meet EPC C. When you also factor in the extortionate cost of private rents, it’s no wonder more than one in five private renters are living in fuel poverty, by far the highest rate of any tenure type. 

Landlords have consistently shown that they will not make energy efficiency improvements unless forced to do so. So, the government forcing their hand is extremely welcome, to address both fuel poverty and the climate emergency. But getting this policy right will be crucial. The push towards net zero has been widely criticised by some over recent years, with claims it will cost those who can least afford to pay.

In response to The Guardian’s investigation, a government spokesperson said that the new minimum energy efficiency standards “could lift up to half a million households out of fuel poverty by 2030”. But a major caveat to this claim is that there is very little to stop landlords from simply hiking the rent after improving the energy efficiency of a home, cancelling out any bill savings for the renter. 

Read more:

• ‘My landlord doubled my rent after watching TikTok’: How to challenge unfair rent increases
• Renters’ Rights Act: Labour’s landmark rental reforms receive royal assent and finally become law
• The Renters’ Rights Act is finally here. Here’s what is changing for tenants and landlords

There are no limits on how much landlords can raise the rent in England. The housing secretary Angela Rayner recently ruled out bringing in rent controls, citing measures in the Renters’ Rights Act that may reduce the cost of rents. This includes giving tenants more power to challenge unfair rent increases through the first-tier tribunal.

However, Generation Rent’s analysis found there is a clear relationship between a home’s energy efficiency rating and the rent the tribunal will decide is fair. For example, the average discount in terms of rent on EPC D homes, when compared to Band C, is worth £211 per month. If you consider that Band D homes are only around £200 a year more expensive in terms of energy bills, it becomes clear that landlords not only have the opportunity to recoup their investment through rent, but they could even turn it into an even higher profit than they’re already making. 

Thankfully, the government still has time to make sure it is tenants, not landlords, who feel the benefit of warmer homes and cheaper bills. While Rayner has sadly ruled out rent controls for now, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will introduce new legislation when parliament returns in the autumn to bring the new energy efficiency standards into law. 

As part of this, they must implement a change to the first-tier tribunal’s decision making process to make sure, where a landlord has recently invested to improve a home’s energy efficiency rating to bring it up to the new standard, this is not seen as grounds for a significant rent increase. This would mean renters could successfully stop landlords profiteering off a policy designed to reduce fuel poverty and emissions. 

After all, no renter should have to choose between heating their home and paying their rent, whether their landlord is the king or not. 

Nye Jones is head of campaigns at Generation Rent

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