Hips energy assessors earn less than £10,00

By Michael Willoughby
Most energy performance certifiers inspect just over one home per day at a rate of £30-45
Energy assessors working on the troubled home information pack initiative are earning less than £10,000 a year from this work, it has emerged.

It was initially feared that there would be a shortage of self-employed domestic energy assessors to award the energy performance certificates (EPCs) included within Hips. This led thousands of people to train, at a cost of £3,000-5,000, to carry out the assessments. But there are now so many assessors that the average income from this work could fall to less than £8,000 as more assessors qualify.

According to the communities department, there were 6,467 registered assessors as of 23 January 2008. The estimated earning per EPC is between £30 and £45. In most areas the number of homes per assessor per working day hovered between one and 1.4.

The average income is a far cry from the £50,000-80,000 that some training companies were promising at the beginning of last year. Industry figures have now hit out at the government for raising hopes of high salaries in order to get assessors in place quickly.

Paul Staley, managing director of ERS, which manages more than 100 domestic energy assessors for Hips firm LMS, said he has had to lay off about one-third of his assessors in recent months. He said: “During the initial recruitment drive the communities department outlined unrealistic and inflated salaries as a tactic to draw recruits.”

The situation is only going to get worse for assessors. The Council of Mortgage Lenders is predicting a fall in house sales of at least 15% over 2008, and the communities department says that, when all students are accredited, there will be 10,951 assessors.
There was no comment from the government.