At long last the government have finally outlined the upgraded Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) in relation to non-domestic property in England and Wales. You will recall that since 1st April 2023 all commercial properties needed to have a minimum EPC of a Band ‘E’ and it was anticipated that this would be increased to a Band ‘B’ by 1st April 2030.
It now transpires that this deadline has been pushed back to 1st April 2031 and now only applies to non-domestic buildings over 1,000m² (10,764ft²).
All these buildings will need to be a Band ‘B’. All commercial buildings under the 1,000m² mark will need to be a Band ‘E’.
This will be a great relief to a lot of commercial landlords at the smaller end of the scale who had been looking at quite expensive upgrades to properties by way of increased insulation, replacement lighting systems and alternative heating sources, moving away from gas and oil to electricity.
One question which remains is, does the 1,000m² rule apply to a single building or an individual commercial unit? Frequently on larger industrial estates one large steel portal frame building may be constructed and divided into say four smaller units; clarification is still needed on this aspect.
There also appears to be a possible exemption for landlords if they can show that the price of retrofitting a property is too costly and there is talk of a 7-year ‘payback test’ to determine the feasibility.
We await further guidance and clarification from the government as time goes on, but for now this is a long-awaited announcement which will be beneficial to a lot of our smaller private landlords.