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Northern Ireland Energy
Performance Certificates (EPC)
Property Owners in Northern Ireland may
be in for a shock, for not only do they have to contend
with a falling property market, over subscribed rental
market but to top it off the Northern Ireland Executive
are introducing a requirement to provide an Energy
Performance Certificate when you sell or rent out your
property.
Unlike the HIPs introduced in England the requirement
in Northern Ireland extends to all property on or coming
onto the market after the end of June 2008.
There are a few exceptions to the June deadline which
are that new buildings won't have to provide an EPC until the 30th
September and that properties being rented out have until December 2008
(check
other dates/exceptions).
Editorial
The Northern Ireland Executive could not have chosen a more
inappropriate time to introduce this EU Directive. It has its upside, it
will provide work for people training new accredited assessors, it will
provide new jobs within the housing market and it will provide
substantial VAT receipts for the Treasury, which one must assume filters
back to the Northern Ireland Executive introducing the measure.
However, there is also a substantial downside to this measure, it
takes effect as of the end of June, yet there are no enough trained
assessors in Northern Ireland to process the property currently on the
market, a serious concern as this directive covers houses currently
being marketed.
The information seminars arranged by
the Finance Ministry were unable to inform us as to why the
measure was rushed in, the penalties for
non-compliance, whether there would be a grace period, who breaches
were reported to, who prosecuted breaches and in which tribunal
etc. No-one at the 'Information Day' seemed to know very much,
not even the cost of the EPC. The closest were could come to a
figure was the Finance Department website, which states around
£100 although insisting the market would set the price.
We have sought clarification from the Department of Finance and will
update our readers in due course. More information is available on
Department
of Finance website.
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