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Energy Assessment
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The DEA Upgrade qualification.
DEAs will need to upgrade their qualification in order to retain the ability to practice after 1st April 2012. Clarification on the requirement was provided at a seminar for stakeholders at the offices of DCLG on 12th December 2011.
A background to the need for an enhanced qualification was given by Jonathan Bramhall of DCLG and the slides are here.
This looked at the need to for the EPC to engage the reader more and to stimulate actions. The differences in the new format EPC were shown together with the reasons behind them. These are mainly intended to increase the readability of the document to encourage more people to read them, and improve the signposting of improvement measures to increase the stimulation of positive action.
It is intended that RdSAP will be altered to use regional weather data to give more area specific cost estimates, bringing it into line with the online EPC Adviser tool. That will not affect the "national standard" basis for the rating but increase the accuracy of forecast costs and savings. It was unclear whether this would be in time for April or whether it will be part of a subsequent release.
Estate Agents will only need to provide page 1 of the EPC and although it was indicated that this would not cause them a problem, exactly how it is envisaged that the front page of a secured PDF will be separated out was not explained.
There is also to be the facility to remove the property address from the EPC. Again however it appeared that the means of doing so, and still ensuring the EPC can only be used for the property it relates to, is not yet fully worked out.
DEAs will need to upgrade their qualification in order to retain the ability to practice after 1st April 2012. Clarification on the requirement was provided at a seminar for stakeholders at the offices of DCLG on 12th December 2011.
A background to the need for an enhanced qualification was given by Jonathan Bramhall of DCLG and the slides are here.
This looked at the need to for the EPC to engage the reader more and to stimulate actions. The differences in the new format EPC were shown together with the reasons behind them. These are mainly intended to increase the readability of the document to encourage more people to read them, and improve the signposting of improvement measures to increase the stimulation of positive action.
It is intended that RdSAP will be altered to use regional weather data to give more area specific cost estimates, bringing it into line with the online EPC Adviser tool. That will not affect the "national standard" basis for the rating but increase the accuracy of forecast costs and savings. It was unclear whether this would be in time for April or whether it will be part of a subsequent release.
Estate Agents will only need to provide page 1 of the EPC and although it was indicated that this would not cause them a problem, exactly how it is envisaged that the front page of a secured PDF will be separated out was not explained.
There is also to be the facility to remove the property address from the EPC. Again however it appeared that the means of doing so, and still ensuring the EPC can only be used for the property it relates to, is not yet fully worked out.
An overview of what is required within the upgrade was given by Tracey Heyworth of DCLG and the slides are here.
Key points are that DEAs who do not upgrade by 1st April will definitely cease to be able to lodge and the earliest the exam will be available would be late January. They will still be able to do the upgrade training and exam after April 1st but will not be able to work as DEAs while they are and the facility to do the upgrade as a separate unit will not continue beyond 2012.
The upgrade is expected to require around 8 hours of guided learning which can be face-
Finally a presentation was given by Richard Foxwell of Asset Skills and Alan Pither who is working with Asset Skills to produce training material.
The intention, which is well underway, is for Asset Skills to provide a standard set of training materials for all trainers to be able to use, thus enhancing consistency in the upgrade training. This should be available by early to mid January.
There is nothing to stop trainers doing their own thing but the cost of this material has been kept down by subsidy to encourage widespread use.
Detail in the content of the qualification and the required reading is in the slides here.
There is also a specification for the upgrade unit here.