Ending January in a positive mood!

I am in a very good mood today! Partly because I have EPCs booked in for tomorrow (I always like to start and end the month with work booked in, makes me feel positive for the month ahead) and partly because of all the news I have seen recently:

1. " Quidos investigate Trading Standards regime

Quidos has conducted a survey of all UK Local Authorities and the amount of enforcement that has been implemented with regard to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.It is clear there is very minimal, and in the vast majority, no enforcement action being undertaken by local trading standards in regard of EPBD regulations. 65 of the 177 authorities, that responded, have made zero enquiries into EPBD compliance. A further 48 authorities had made less than 10 enquiries.In 2008/09 £3.4million was provided by DCLG to cover the costs of EPBD enforcement to Local Authorities (in England and Wales). In the following years this has been reduced to £1.9million per year.

To date over £6,000,000.00 has been funded from the public purse to English and Welsh Local Authorities who have made enquiries of under 7,000 buildings in the past 3 years. Of these inspections 75% of them were conducted by just 14 separate TSOs. A total of 23 Penalty Charge Notices have been issued, which represents a lack of appetite to penalise rather than high rates of compliance. What enforcement that exists, is largely reactive rather than proactive. This would suggest that either there is very high compliance with the regulations and no problems exist; or (and far more likely) that there is very low compliance, and very few complaints are received by the Trading Standards Officers because no-one is aware of the legislation. A chicken and egg scenario.
At present the 200 separate Trading Standards departments are under pressure from financial restraint, and increasing emphasis on more ‘high risk’ areas to monitor, hence collectively it is a difficult task to enforce the EPBD regulations.
Philip Salaman, Managing Director of Quidos commented that “Quidos recommendations are to regionalise the enforcement to eight defined geographical areas, with a small number of dedicated trading standard officers to enforce the EPBD regulations. This has been very successfully adopted in Northern Ireland, and should provide a model for England, Wales, and Scotland.” 
In addition Quidos recommend the provision for private companies to be contracted by these regionalised TSOs to provide enforcement if required. Fines can be defined (and retained) by each region, with a maximum being imposed by DCLG.
Mr Salaman adds: “In these austere times we all face, there needs to be an emphasis on cost cutting. Energy certification can provide that, since it highlights inefficiencies and ways to implement cost savings through reduced energy consumption. Local authorities should look to EPBD enforcement not only as a revenue generating exercise, but one in which to reduce energy consumption across their locality.”

Click here to see the full report on Quidos.co.uk"

Lovely to see that things are getting looked into!

2.  "House prices in England and Wales fell 0.2 percent in December, leaving them 1.5 percent higher than the same month a year ago, figures from the Land Registry showed on Monday. "

Brilliant, lets see some renewed confidence in the housing market then please!

3. "David Cameron has claimed banks are being too cautious in restricting mortgage lending, as Bank of England figures showed borrowing falling sharply. The PM said banks and building societies are to blame for becoming too stringent in their lending regulations, and that they were preventing the housing market from progressing. Speaking to voters in Leicester, Mr Cameron said it was vital for the economy that Britain's housing market became more competitive. His comments followed Housing Minister Grant Shapps recent statement that the Government did not want another housing boom. Banks and building societies have introduced more restrictive mortgage rules since the global economic crash revealed millions had been sold mortgages beyond their means. But the Prime Minister called on lenders to return to 'respectable' lending in order to stimulate growth. 'In a way the pendulum has now swung too far the other way,' he said. 'If you are a single person, you are earning a decent salary. You go to the bank or building society, you are actually quite a good risk - they won't give you 80% of the value, they won't give you four times your salary.'

He added: 'You need a housing market where people are able to sell and move. The housing market has become very stuck and we've got to get it moving again.' But the task he faces was thrown into relief by Bank of England figures published today which showed that mortgage lending fell sharply in the final months of 2010, with buyers walking away in the face of the huge deposits demanded by banks.

Demand for mortgages from people buying a home fell sharply during the fourth quarter, according to the Bank of England's Credit Conditions Survey. A balance of 41.5% of banks and building societies said borrowing for house purchase 'fell markedly' during the final three months of the year, with demand dropping at its fastest rate since the third quarter of 2008. A combination of falling house prices and economic uncertainty caused by Government spending cuts caused people to delay decisions to move, and these factors are expected to continue to contribute to subdued lending.

But there was a feeling among lenders that the inability of would-be buyers to raise the huge deposits currently needed to secure a competitive rate was also constraining demand.

What's more, lenders thought they may tighten their affordability criteria further as interest rates rose, while some credit scoring criteria may also be tightened in response to new guidance from the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Services Authority's mortgage market review "

So from that can we hope that the lenders and the government are finally realising that the current tight restrictions on borrowing is making the market worse? Lets hope so!

 

Co-operatives

At the moment there are 100s of websites offering EPCs, both commercial and domestic, at low cost prices Nationwide.

These are more often that not middle-men, and there has been lots of cases recently where DEAs are not being paid and the "middle-men" firms are going under, shutting up and both the DEA and the clients are getting burnt.

In 2008 I was involved with trying to set up a "union" for DEAs - mainly because I am passionate about this industry and wanted to see it promoted more but also because I felt that DEAs NEEDED to work together to provide more coverage and to effectively "cut out" the middlemen.
I feel that this, more than ever, is required. DEAs need to be working together - to provide holiday cover for each other, support and if there were enough DEAs working together to be able to provide a service to larger nationwide estate agents and clients.

If there was Nationwide coverage from a co-operative of DEAs then they would be able to have a larger pot for advertising - putting them "up" there with the middlemen on google rankings and therefore the DEAs would benefit by getting more clients and therefore more work. It would benefit the client because they would be speaking with trained and accredited DEAs and not a call centre operative who would simply be passing a message on.

This solution of a co-operative would benefit all concerned and is definitely on my Christmas wish list this year.

Nothing of interest

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20101122/tsc-uk-climate-costs-011ccfa.html - worth reading. Its interesting to know that it will cost money if we don't work together to save energy and money!

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Work is picking up quiet a bit at the minute (fingers crossed and touch wood) so hopefully it will continue for a while. The evil creatures I live with (my children) have finally been sleeping through the night so I have been playing catch up on my sleep while I can.

Am eagerly awaiting the Cancun fortnight and whatever (hopefully lots) of decisions are made during that time, I haven't been writing as much lately as I think you will all get very bored with me during that fortnight as I get on my soapbox and rant about whatever is released in the press.

I am sad to say that there seems to be still alot of problems for some DEAs getting their money out of an EPC company - it is a shame and there are always two sides to every story but at the end of the day if you have done the work you deserve to be paid and in this current climate it is essential that you are paid and paid on time! There was another story about it today - follow this link http://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/News/Story/?storyid=3738&type=news_features

Normal jitters

I have woken up this morning and am having my monthly worry about work loads - its quiet, too quiet - can I afford to continue with the job that I adore????

Since becoming self employed in January of 2008 I regularly panic about my workload, after all I have 3 children, 4 dogs and bills to pay, I need to make sure that my money is coming in. But this is a job I truly believe in, I love doing and it gives me time to spend with my children so what do you do? I make sure that my turnaround is within 24hours whenever possible and do my best to give good customer service and make sure that I am professional at all times so that I retain my existing clients which I consider essential.

The only part of my job I am not so keen on is chasing invoices - I hate it to be honest. I have only not been paid once and given the fact that I have been in business for nearly 3 years and only have one unpaid invoice thats not bad going! But when is too early to chase invoices and what is the polite way to do it? But as I said I am very lucky with my clients, they all pay on time (if not early) and are brilliant in that regard.

But what does get me at the moment is these facts:
1. Training providers are still advertising training courses for DEAs, "earn between 25,000 -30,000 a year" - thats simply not possible in the current climate. There are alot of DEAs that sunk retirement/redundancy/loans etc into training with training providers that promised them the moon, stars and sun and they have had to return back to previous methods of employment because the work simply isn't there and yet the training providers are still out there taking money off people.
2. Where is the unity with DEAs? There are several groups/organisations that are trying very hard to band DEAs together (I was involved with one of them) so that the self employed DEA can work together for better prices and better promotion but there isn't enough DEAs joining the groups.
3. Middlemen - there are too many firms out there offering cut price/ reverse auction EPCs to the general public but who pay the DEA a pittance. It isn't good for the industry, isn't professional and doesn't do any good for the pockets of the DEA.

There we go rant over for the morning, better go and do the school run x