Energy Performance Certificate Photos

[The Other Mike]

INTERNAL photographs required for the EPC

Bottom two entries in Column 3

[mogga]

Have you ever seen photos with an EPC?

[The Other Mike]

No, badly worded post, these are to protect the arse of the assessor

[Terry Fields]

Wasn't there a proposal a few years ago that local authorities were going to photograph the interiors and exteriors of every house, in order to put up Council Tax?

I believe the cameras had been purchased and staff trained, when the scheme was withdrawn.

Could this be a similar data-mining exercise? Who does the auditing? Who has access? etc, etc...

[Huge]

Fuck that noise. What happens if you refuse to allow the photos to be taken?

[Adrian]

I guess those getting excited haven't moved in the last few years? When the EPC assessor wanders round and ticks his little checklist of all the things your house has, in order to produce that accurate and valuable certificate, he just... takes some pics of the things he's looking at.

That's all. No more than that. Then, if anybody queries a "too high" score, they can say "Look, we could see/touch/measure/lick these things at the time".

[Adrian]

Then you get a lower EPC score, since they can't prove those things are in place, so ignore them.

[Robin]

Urban myth(ish). It's the VOA which carries out valuation for CT purposes in E&W. They may (rarely) want to see inside a property and (even more rarely) to take photos indoors. No one has yet been prosecuted for not letting them do it. They can after all make their best estimate without - which may of course result in more CVT being payable than otherwise so occupiers tend to put before privacy :) See for details

[Huge]

Ah, thank you.

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 05 December 2013 12:48 Terry Fields wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I hope not.

Yes I remember - and I remmeber thinking exaclty what I was going to say to some jobsworth if he tried photographing inside my house!

[Bob Henson]

I was not going to say anything - I figured he'd work out what I was thinking whilst he was getting his camera back out.

[Huge]

You and me, both.

[SteveW]

The solar hot water one might be valid, as it could be the the pump, controls, additional heating coils or tank, etc. The solar one however, yes I see your point as it specifically refers to the panels.

SteveW

[Hugo Nebula]

And there's me thinking carrying out one of those surveys involved slowing down to second gear.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You have to remember that they kept dumbing the scheme down, to match the low skill levels of the applicants. They originally thought lots of builders and others from the building trade would apply, but virtually none of the applicants knew anything about the building trade.

At the moment, no one takes any notice of the EPC, so the fact that the quality of the reports is so low doesn't matter. If government start using them for setting stamp duty rates or similar (as is being pushed by the green scheme companies to try and drum up business which is not viable on costs alone), then the wrongly skilled accessors could become quite a serious issue.

[Adrian]

It's already a big issue if the house doesn't make it to the required level, if you want to put solar in and get the feed-in tariff... The FIT for houses band D & above is twice that for those below. It's been the difference between us putting solar on an outbuilding roof and not doing so.

[dennis]

Why would it being on an outbuilding matter, you can install them in the garden as long as the *house* meets the EPC requirements.