solar panels for landlords in London

Serving London and the wider Greater London area, including Croydon, Bromley, Dartford.

Why London landlords are acting on solar now

London has the largest private rented sector of any city in the UK. Around a quarter of all London households rent privately, and a very large share of that stock is pre-1945 Victorian and Edwardian housing, terraces, conversions, and mansion blocks, much of it sitting at EPC band D or worse. The government response to its landlord consultation (21 January 2026) proposes that every privately rented home in England reach EPC band C by 1 October 2030, with a cost cap of up to £10,000 per property; legislation is aimed for 2027 and is subject to Parliament. For London’s landlords that would turn a vague aspiration into a hard capital-planning deadline across a portfolio that is older and harder to upgrade than almost anywhere else in the country.

Solar is not a silver bullet for a London EPC. Under the proposed fabric-based assessment, insulation moves the band more per pound than panels do. But on the right roof, a 3 to 4 kW array combined with the cheapest fabric measures is often the most cost-effective route over the line, and it is the one measure that also generates income and survives future changes to how the EPC is scored. The Greater London Authority has one of the most ambitious targets in the country, net zero by 2030, and the London Plan actively supports rooftop solar. That policy backdrop matters when you are seeking freeholder consent on a conversion or a permitted development steer from a borough planning team.

The London challenge: who owns the roof?

The single biggest practical issue for London landlords is not sunshine, it is roof ownership. A huge proportion of London’s rented stock is leasehold flats and maisonettes where the landlord owns the lease but not the roof. Fitting solar on that stock needs the freeholder’s or managing agent’s consent, and solar is one of the improvements the government explicitly names as needing third-party consent. The strongest schemes for blocks are communal arrays serving the landlord-supply areas, lifts, stair and corridor lighting, door entry systems, and basement pumps, where the freeholder is the bill payer and self-consumption returns real cash.

Where you make genuine best efforts and consent is refused, that itself is a registrable third-party-consent exemption on the PRS Exemptions Register, which buys five years. Handle the freeholder conversation and document the consent trail either way, so you have a clean record whether the answer is yes or no. For houses in multiple occupation, which London has in vast numbers across Newham, Brent, Ealing and the inner boroughs, the picture flips: a bills-inclusive HMO landlord is the bill payer, so solar plus a battery returns cash directly and the split-incentive problem disappears.

London’s boroughs, the borough that decides your project

The Greater London Authority sets strategy, but the borough decides your planning and conservation position, and that varies enormously across the capital. A south-facing roof in outer Bromley or Croydon is usually straightforward permitted development. A flat conversion in a Camden or Kensington and Chelsea conservation area, or anything on a listed building, is a different conversation and needs early engagement. The neighbouring towns where many London landlords also hold stock, Croydon, Bromley, Dartford, Watford and Slough, each have their own planning teams and their own appetite for rooftop PV, so a portfolio spread across the M25 needs a borough-by-borough plan rather than one blanket approach.

The industrial and mixed-use corridors tell you where the larger landlord opportunities sit. Park Royal in the west is one of Europe’s largest industrial estates and the kind of place where commercial-above-residential and live-work conversions create bigger roofs and stronger daytime loads. Stratford around the Olympic Park, the regenerating Old Kent Road, Greenwich Peninsula and Brent Cross all combine new residential blocks with commercial floorspace, exactly the mixed-use profile where a single freehold landlord controls the whole building and consent hurdles fall away.

What it costs a London landlord, and what you actually get back

A standard 3 to 4 kW array on a London buy-to-let house runs roughly £5,000 to £9,000 fully installed in 2026. A bills-inclusive HMO with a larger shared load and a 4 to 8 kW system runs £7,000 to £14,000, and a battery, worth it mainly when you pay the bills, adds £2,500 to £5,000. A mixed-use building with a shop or office below flats above can take a 5 to 15 kW array at £8,000 to £25,000. Systems are sized to the EPC model and to who pays the bill, not to a homeowner’s usage profile, because that is the variable that decides everything for a landlord.

Be clear-eyed about the return. In a standard London single let where the tenant pays the electricity, you do not get the bill saving, the tenant does. Your return is the EPC band uplift toward 2030, a higher and more defensible rent in a market where energy costs are front of mind for tenants, lower void periods because a lower-bills home lets faster, the Smart Export Guarantee income kept by whoever the system is registered to, and a measurable lift in resale and refinance value as lenders increasingly price EPC risk. London’s high capital values mean even a modest percentage uplift in marketability is worth real money here. Where you do pay the bill, the bills-inclusive HMO, the cash return is excellent and a battery genuinely pays.

Tax, and why London’s incorporated landlords have an edge

A great many London landlords incorporated after Section 24 removed full mortgage-interest relief on personally-held lets. That matters for solar. If your portfolio is held in a limited company, solar is qualifying plant and machinery and the company can use the Annual Investment Allowance, 100% relief on the first £1m of qualifying spend, and potentially the 50% First Year Allowance. If you hold personally as a residential let, you cannot, the furnished holiday let regime and its capital allowances were abolished from April 2025, leaving only Replacement of Domestic Items Relief for furnishings. The structure decides the relief, so your accountant should confirm the position. For a London SPV running a roll-out across several properties, the tax treatment can change the net cost meaningfully.

A realistic London plan

For most London landlords the right move is a programmed approach rather than a panic in 2029. Start with the properties closest to the band C line and the easiest roofs, the outer-borough houses and the freehold buildings you control, then tackle the leasehold flats where freeholder consent takes longer to secure. Improving a property now moves it toward the proposed band C standard, so works you do now are not wasted, and acting early beats the installer bottleneck that may build as 2030 approaches.

A good plan will model the least-cost route to band C for each property, handle the freeholder and conservation-area conversations, register the SEG export in the landlord's name where appropriate, and document a clean exemption trail for any property where a genuine barrier exists. See real figures on the cost page, check which schemes you and your tenants can use on the grants and funding page, and when you are ready, request a quote and we reply by email; start with the single question that decides everything: who pays the electricity bill.