Energy assessors flood nation

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY Ireland (SEI) may have unleashed an army of BER assessors upon the nation to cope with demand from January 1st this year but it now appears to be trying to close the floodgates.

Last year rumours were flying that there wouldn’t be enough registered BER assessors to cope with demand from January 1st this year, when second-hand homes could no longer be legally sold or rented without Building Energy Rating (BER) certificates.

However those rumours appear to have been spectacularly unfounded as the 20 or so training courses around the country have been churning out graduates. There are now 1,750 SEI-registered assessors with a further 4,898 non-registered but certified assessors and another 2,000 awaiting certification.

A press release from SEI says “homeowners can now be confident that there are a sufficient number of assessors to meet demand” and later mentions “there are sufficient assessors to meet foreseeable demand”.

And just in case we weren’t getting the point, it goes on to boot it home with “the conditions for a healthy competitive market for this service are now very much in place”. SEI says there has been a “significant and sustained” increase in the number of BER assessments being completed and published since January 1st with on average 250 per day, making a total of 8,658 assessments.

The quality of the training on offer, however, has been a matter of debate.

Calling BER “a litigation minefield”, Alan Cooke, chief executive of IAVI recently told Property he has advised its members against recommending assessors in the absence of a national test and instead refer clients to a list of assessors approved by SEI. He says already one of its members has been threatened with a lawsuit because it recommended an assessor who carried out an assessment on a listed building which did not require a BER cert.

SEI says that the national test, which registered assessors have committed to passing before the end of 2009, will be introduced later in the year. “This will have no impact on BER ratings that have been issued”, it said. There has been widespread criticism that some of the training courses are primarily interested in making money with little regard to the experience of the participants. There have also been reports of a divergence in the fees being charged by assessors.