Miliband extends landlord EPC deadline to 2030

Nearly half of England’s private rental homes still have an EPC rating of D or below. That is 2.3 million cold, draughty properties where tenants pay £500–£1,000 a year more on energy than they should. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, announced last week that landlords now have until 2030, not 2028, to bring those homes up to a C rating. The decision was reported by This is Money as a two-year extension to the original 2028 deadline, a move that landlords’ groups welcome and tenant advocates criticise.

Why the deadline moved, and who wins

The government argues the extension gives landlords time to plan and finance retrofits without a rush that could push up costs or force evictions. The National Residential Landlords Association had warned that a 2028 deadline would be unachievable for many small landlords, especially with skills shortages in insulation and heat pump installation. But the delay also means another two winters of heat leaking through single-glazed windows and uninsulated lofts. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that a typical 3-bed semi with an EPC D rating wastes about £800 a year compared to a C-rated home. For the 4.4 million private renters in England, that is real money, about 10% of a median renter’s energy bill.

What it costs a typical landlord

Bringing a D-rated property up to C typically costs £10,000–£20,000, depending on the property’s age, construction, and existing systems. The cheapest fixes are loft insulation (£500–£1,000) and cavity wall insulation (£2,000–£3,500). The expensive ones are solid wall insulation (£8,000–£15,000) and replacing an old gas boiler with a heat pump (£7,000–£13,000 before grants). The Great British Insulation Scheme closed on 31 March 2026. It funded insulation measures only and never covered windows or glazing. But neither scheme is fully subscribed; Ofgem figures show only 12% of the available heat pump vouchers were claimed in the first year. The catch is that many landlords still see retrofit as an upfront cost with no immediate rental income return, even though the property’s value typically rises by 5–10% after an EPC upgrade.

What tenants can do now

Tenants in EPC D or below properties have limited power. They can ask the landlord for improvements and threaten to report the property to the local council if it is dangerously cold, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 applies. But the EPC extension removes the automatic compliance trigger that would have forced upgrades by 2028. From 2025, the government also plans to introduce a minimum energy efficiency standard for new tenancies, but details are still vague. For tenants, the practical step is to check their EPC rating on the gov.uk register and, if it is below C, write to the landlord citing the new 2030 deadline as a reason to act early.

What this means for the UK’s climate targets

The UK’s legally binding target is net zero by 2050, and the Climate Change Committee has repeatedly said that improving the existing housing stock is the single biggest lever for cutting emissions. Domestic heating accounts for 14% of UK carbon emissions. Delaying the landlord deadline by two years pushes the retrofit of up to 2.3 million homes further into the 2030s, when the electricity grid will also need to decarbonise. The government’s own heat and buildings strategy, published in 2021, assumed all rented homes would reach EPC C by 2028. That assumption has now slipped. The question is whether the extra two years will be used, or wasted.

Homeowners, not just landlords, should watch this closely. The same standards are likely to come for owner-occupied homes in the 2030s, as the government has already consulted on a phased approach. The cost of insulation and heat pumps will not fall by waiting. If anything, inflation in construction materials and labour shortages will push them higher. The smart money starts planning now, not in 2029.