Energy Performance Certificates were due to be made compulsory on all marketed properties - including those that went on the market before the original HIPs introduction - from the start of October. Some estate agents have been predicting chaos... a swathe of homes without EPCs being withdrawn from the market at the last minute. Here's a Telegraph piece, dated last Saturday, claiming...

Since HIPs were introduced last December it has been a legal requirement for all sellers to obtain one, but the requirement did not apply to sellers whose homes were already on the market. Now the Department for Communities and Local Government has warned that homes already on the market must be withdrawn from sale in October unless their sellers obtain EPCs.

And yet - according to online magazine EstateAgentToday, in a piece dated the very next day - the Government's about to arrange a swift U-turn:

Government minister behind last week’s fiasco on Energy Performance Certificates are expected to perform a U-turn on one of their own pieces of legislation.

Hmm... if you read the piece carefully it's not at all clear that this is the case. It reads more like wishful-thinking combined with pressure on the part of EAT. The Department of Communities and Local Government's website is, as usual, clear, helpful and incisively written:

If you are buying or selling a home it is now law to have an Energy Performance Certificate.

But what about... what if... but you said... oh forget it.

We'll be watching developments closely.

[Thanks, Jim]

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