Landmark Lodgement Fees set to increase

From DCLG:

A recent review of lodgement fees has found that the current level of fees is not sufficient to meet the cost of operating the Registers. This is because the volume of transactions has fallen significantly below that anticipated when the Registers were introduced and there have also been a number of service enhancements. Lodgement fees have remained unchanged since the domestic and non-domestic EPC Registers came into operation in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
It is therefore necessary to increase fees for lodging documents onto the EPC Registers. Fees will increase from £1.15 to £1.67 for a domestic lodgement and from £5.36 to £11.81 for a non-domestic lodgement. These new fees will be set by an amendment to the Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012, which will come into force on 6 April 2013. The increase will ensure that the fees cover the full cost of operating the Registers and will also insure against any risk of additional liabilities being borne by taxpayers.

2 thoughts on “Landmark Lodgement Fees set to increase

  1. Part of our letter to DCLG regarding this:
    “Obviously we were expecting a rise in lodgement fees at some stage, but the 120% increase for non-domestic fees is far beyond excessive. In addition was there any reason to only provide three weeks notice to this change?

    I note that you refer to the significant drop in volume of lodgements as a reason for this increase in fees. However, is it not the Government and Register Operators responsibility to promote and enforce compliance with the regulations? If the volumes are falling, then rather than increasing fees, do we not want to see an increase in lodgement numbers?

    This could be quickly achieved by the Government if better and more consistent enforcement was actually enforced. The current £2million a year spent on local trading standards to encourage compliance is clearly not working, so under the logic you have used to increase the lodgement fees, surely the same applies to the enforcement budget?

    Given the formula you have used to calculate the revised lodgement fees, can we presume that when the volumes do manage to exceed the predicted numbers approaching full compliance, will the lodgement fees be reduced accordingly?”

  2. Another thing that doesn’t help anybody’s income (DCLG or a DEA) is the 10 year EPC validity period, which is too long, EPCs for house sales used to be 3 years but this was changed to 10 years when HIPs were cancelled.

    Considering the fast rising cost of energy to households, EPCs should be reinstated with a validity period of no than 3 years for sales and rentals, which is what the EPC front page energy estimate shows at the moment.

    A 10 year EPC is pointless and of no value.

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