Legal update
Minimum energy efficiency standards and care homes
Tom Lumsden, a partner at CooperBurnett LLP, explains how recent changes to the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) Regulations affect care home owners
On 1 April it became unlawful for a landlord to continue to let a ‘sub-standard’ commercial property. Care home operators will be aware of
the requirement for commercial properties to have Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). The MEES regulation changes define a sub-standard property as one with an EPC of F or G. It is therefore essential that all owners of commercial properties should review the regulations by taking professional advice from a suitably qualified consultant who is familiar with the MEES regulations and the provision of EPC assessments on commercial properties. These new regulations apply to all non- domestic private rented properties (these are separate from the MEES rules that apply
to dwellings let under assured or regulated tenancies).
Points to consider One needs to consider, in each individual case, the layout of a care home and the facilities provided. Individual care suites occupied by residents, where there are only sleeping facilities (and no exclusive use of a kitchen and bathroom) are not likely to be classed as a dwelling for the purposes of the regulations, but more likely as ‘rooms for residential purposes’. This definition appears in the glossary of the government’s guide to EPCs for the construction, sale, and let of new dwellings (which was updated on 11 December 2017).
Rooms for residential purposes are not
dwellings and constitute a room or a suite of rooms that is not a dwelling house or an apartment, and that are used by one or more persons to live and sleep. This includes a room in a hostel, a hotel, a boarding house, a hall of residents, or a residential home. In most care home situations, the individual rooms would not have both exclusive (as opposed to shared) bathroom and kitchen facilities and therefore should not need separate ‘residential’ EPCs for each room. A ‘global’ non-domestic EPC for the whole building should suffice.
If there are individual rooms that could
be deemed to be dwellings, where there is a separate kitchen area and bathroom facilities that are only used or capable of being used by the occupier of that room and those facilities are not shared, then that could constitute a dwelling and, in this case, a separate EPC would be required each time the room is let out or sold. There are exemptions. The owner of a building can seek what is called a ‘permitted exemption’, which they would have to register on the PRS Exemptions Register; alternatively they would have to show that all relevant cost-effective energy efficiency improvements have been made (or none can be made) and the EPC rating remains at F or G and an exemption has been registered. There are several potential ‘permitted
exemptions’ on which a landlord may rely but those which are most likely to apply in the case of a residential care home are as follows: n Where the estimated savings on energy costs from the proposed energy efficiency improvement works are less than the cost of those works, calculated over a period of seven years. The obligation to show the savings would fall on the care home owner.
n Where the recommended improvement works require consent from a third party and that consent cannot be obtained. For example, if planning permission
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www.thecarehomeenvironment.com April 2023
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