New laws: Government delays or drops green and other property-related proposals

The government has announced delays to various green and other proposals affecting property, including:

• New ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’ environmental rules requiring developers to improve countryside/wildlife habitats.
• Abolition of landlords’ powers to evict assured shorthold residential tenants without cause, simply by serving the appropriate ‘section 21 notice’.
• Introduction of periodic assured tenancies with no end date.
• New rules regulating annual rent increases.
• New grounds for repossessing properties, such as for anti-social behaviour and persistent accrued rent arrears.
• New rules prohibiting landlords from unreasonably refusing to consent to pets at a property.

In addition, the government is permanently dropping other proposals, including those requiring landlords to upgrade the energy performance ratings of their properties before they can sell or let them, previously planned for 2025 and 2028.

There are compensatory measures to encourage improvements, such as an increase in grants available to move from gas boilers to heat pumps or other greener alternatives.

The government has also put forward an exemption to the proposed ban on gas and other fossil fuel boilers from 2035, so that households that find it difficult to convert to low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps (estimated to be about 20% of homes) will not have to comply.

Operative date

• Various

Recommendation

• Owners, landlords, tenants and managing agents should consider the various delays to, and dropping of, proposed plans, and any compensatory measures, and review their strategies, business models and forecasts and budgets accordingly.