The private rental sector is facing a significant challenge in meeting the Government’s newly proposed energy efficiency target, new research by Hamptons has warned.

At the current pace of improvement, the estate agent suggested it will take landlords until 2042 to bring all privately rented homes up to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of A to C, well beyond the Government's suggested 2030 target.

If landlords continue making energy efficiency improvements at the current rate, the research has indicated it will take 18 years for all rental properties in England and Wales to achieve an EPC rating between A and C. However, this still represents an acceleration from the 89 years it would have taken at 2016 rates.

Hamptons belies that successive changes to proposed energy efficiency rules have “shifted the goalposts for landlords”, and that the forthcoming review of the EPC system may move them again.

“To meet the 2030 target, approximately 340,000 rental homes will need to make improvements to achieve at least an EPC C rating every year,” head of research at Hamptons, Aneisha Beveridge, said.

“This is a threefold increase on an annual basis from the 115,000 homes expected to make sufficient improvements in 2024. The same number of homes will need to see energy upgrades over the next five years as we’ve seen make improvements in the last 30 years.”

While the previous Government announced plans to ban rentals of homes with a sub-EPC C rating by 2025, this ambition was scrapped last year.

Despite this, Beveridge suggested that many landlords have “pre-empted the change”.

She added: “Given the increasing importance of an EPC C rating, rental homes moving EPC bands were most likely to move from a D rating up to a C rating. Half of homes that were previously rated D went on to achieve at least a C rating upon reassessment this year. Meanwhile, 29% of homes that had an EPC E rating went on to be reassessed as having a rating of C or above.”

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