BER Implementation….. The Chaos & Confusion…

So, the January 1^st deadline for implementation of the BER Legislation has come and gone and with it my optimism that this system is ever going to get off the ground in a satisfactory manner.

As it stands, the 1^st January deadline seems to have been replaced with a notional 30^th June 2009 deadline, although this has not been communicated officially to the public, much less to any of the assessors who are still waiting on a confirmed date for the examination that will allow us to certify Existing Dwellings (yes, those same Existing Dwellings that were due to be certified according to the 1^st January deadline).

I have no idea what the delay is but can only assume that the 50 question multiple-choice examination is proving trickier than envisaged to set, although you’d think the course notes we used 4 months ago to prepare for this same examination would be a useful place to start.

Photo owned by A6U571N (cc)

It is doubling my pessimism that the ‘announcement’ concerning the revised implementation date was made public via the publishing online of an IAVI mail-out to its members dated 27^th November. This information was furnished following a meeting between the IAVI (Institute of Auctioneers and Valuers) and SEI in which the IAVI seem to have been given the all-clear to allow its members to certify each others properties. I’m struggling not to use the words ‘vested-interests’ and ‘cartels’ here.

This, combined with SEI approval for Public Bodies to perform their own BER assessments, seems to suggest that there will be far less ‘independence’ in this system than was previously suggested by the Code of Conduct.

According to SEI figures from November 08, the number of certified assessors has topped 3,700, with less than 1/3 of these registered with SEI to carry out assessments.

Given that the property market is dead or, at very least quite un-well, I can’t see how the 1000 or so registered assessors have a hope of ever seeing a return on their investment in training.

My next post will be more up-beat. Honest.

Dec notes: Friday Flora and Fauna has caught the savage flu virus but will hopefully be with us again next week…. and we’ve more new flickr photos up – this time the beer experiment and Headfest 2007.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 4:54 pm. It is filed under About Energy and tagged with BER assessor Galway, BER Galway, Building Energy Ratings, Energy Assessment, IAVI, SEI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.