The Residential Log Book Association (RLBA) believes the government has overlooked a crucial aspect of retrofitting in its Warm Homes plan. RLBA chair Nigel Walley explains why the use of log books in homes with low carbon technologies would ease the pressure on conveyancers and consumers.
The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has published its Warm Homes plan, billing it “the largest national home upgrade programme in British history”.
“It is a £15 billion, five-year investment aimed at tackling fuel poverty, reducing energy bills, and lowering carbon emissions by upgrading up to 5 million homes by 2030.”
This comes on the back of a National Audit Office (NAO) report in October, citing an extensive failure and suspected fraud across the previous schemes (Energy Company Obligations, or ECO initiatives).
In response to the NAO report, the policy team at Citizen’s Advice published its own report highlighting the poor state of consumer information. According to the report, Stepping up, one of the major areas of failure is the information given to homeowners.
Low carbon technologies
CA calls for all homes installing any form of low carbon technologies (LCTs), including cladding, solar, heat pumps and EV chargers, to be given a building logbook to store key information and help monitor performance.
Specifically, it says:
“Building on the outcomes of MHCLG’s consultation on buying and selling homes, routes to introduce building log books into the retrofit market should be identified.
“Performance of measures to be verified at installation and logged in a building logbook so changes to homes can be tracked over time.”
The report also calls for the government (via DESNZ) to:
“Develop an implementation timetable for introducing building logbooks in the retrofit market.”
The CA report follows a series of publications from bodies including the Climate Change Committee, the Energy Systems Catapult, and the Institute of Engineering, all of which have made similar calls to include digital building logbooks in Warm Homes policy.
Following the EU’s lead
Many EU countries now mandate logbooks when a property that contains LCT is sold.
However, the RLBA was disappointed to see that DESNZ effectively ignored the importance of consumer information in general, and specifically the role of data in the revised Warm Homes plan.
There seem to be no plans to address the poor level of information being given to homeowners who install LCTs, which is causing significant problems for people trying to run their homes after these installs.
It is also increasingly causing problems for conveyancers when they try and sell these homes.
The Law Society has begun to address this problem with additional information requested on installed LCTs now added to the revised TA6 form. The difficulty for conveyancers is that this seemingly increases the amount of technical information they might be expected to review and comment on.
Easing the pressure on conveyancers
We think this could be a mistake and a logbook would be a solution that takes pressure off conveyancers.
The RLBA core logbook specification contains sections on LCT and was configured to support the handover of information on these technically ‘complex’ homes.
The RLBA has made specific recommendations to MHCLG in following the European example, and mandating logbooks for homes where LCTs have been installed.
Given that MHCLG is now considering mandating logbooks, the lack of co-ordination between government departments on retrofit is disappointing.
We would also highlight that the Legal Services Consumer Panel (the primary body representing the interests of legal services consumers), in its response to the MHCLG Consultation, echoed the CA’s policy paper, saying:
“Consumers must be empowered with information to make the best choices for themselves and this principle is even more important in the property market.”
Logbooks for these technologically complex homes could not just empower homeowners, but also relieve conveyancers of the pressure to manage complex data and documentation on handover of these homes.
About the author
Nigel Walley is a media and technology industry professional with a significant experience in emerging digital media technologies. Over the last 10 years he has used his experience built in the early years of internet development to launch tech thinktank Decipher, the media R&D facility iBurbia (in London, Manchester and Glasgow) and the homeowner-focused digital services company Chimni.
