It's complicated: Why private landlords can fail to improve the energy efficiency of their properties

Private rented properties can have low levels of energy efficiency frustrating efforts to tackle climate change and negatively affecting tenants' health and wellbeing. Limited landlord action on energy efficiency partly explains the tenure's poor energy performance. To build understanding of this behaviour, this study examines the reasons that landlords give for not achieving a mandatory minimum energy efficiency standard when registering a property as exempt from this standard. The study is concerned with the reasons presented by landlords in the English private rented sector, which operates a mandatory minimum standard. The study analysed over 1000 properties recorded in the UK Government's ‘PRS Exemptions Register’ as exempt from the standard, the Energy Performance Certificates of exempt properties, and company information for landlords with exempt properties. Findings showed that landlords operating as organisations had more exempt properties than did individual private landlords, and that these two types of landlords differed in their reasons for not meeting the minimum standard. There were also differences between landlords with primary business interests inside the property sector and those with primary interests outside this sector. Amongst all landlords, cost, difficulties in securing third party consent for property improvements, and property characteristics that preclude improvement via ‘conventional’ energy efficiency measures were the most commonly cited reasons for not meeting the standard. The article considers the implications of the findings for energy policy.