Focus On the New Multi-Year Work Plan Imposed on Co-Ownership
The multi-year work plan is a new requirement arising from the passage of the Climate and Resilience Law in August 2021, which was inspired by the Citizen’s Climate Convention’s work. The aim to repair and modernize housing at the national level remains the course of action, and different measures, including this, help to coordinate the activity more accurately. What effect will this multi-year work plan have on French property owners, and when will it happen? The government’s answers thus far are listed below.
What obligation is there?
The premise is simple: because the building is over 15 years old, the co-owners’ organizations must carry out a multi-year work plan every 10 years. An study of the building and an energy performance diagnostic (DPE), which will lead the co-ownership towards compliance with the current requirements, are required to decide what to add.
This includes work that is critical to the building’s security, as well as work that is required for the inhabitants’ health and safety, as well as work that is beneficial to the building’s energy categorization.
The measure has a dual purpose: it informs owners who aren’t always informed about their co-ownership’s actual requirements in terms of maintenance and modernisation, and it compensates for the delays that French co-owners exhibit in terms of restoration, particularly insulation.
On the finance side, the existing requirement to provide a works fund is reiterated: a contribution of at least 5% of the anticipated budget or 2.5 percent of the total value of the approved work plan must be provided.
A phased implementation
The need will be phased in over time to allow smaller co-owners to organize themselves. As a result, three deadlines have been set:
• For co-owners with more than 200 lots, the deadline is January 1, 2023;
• For those with 50 to 199 lots, the deadline is January 1, 2024; and
• For those with fewer than 50 lots, the deadline is January 1, 2025.
To guarantee its execution and manage its timeline, the multi-year work plan should be presented at the first general meeting after its creation and placed on the agenda for each consecutive meeting.
The content of the multi-year work plan
In concrete terms, the plan must contain all of the components, which must be measured and prioritized over time to ensure that the goal established after the building’s analysis and energy performance diagnostic is met. This goal must at the very least enable the co-ownership to meet legal responsibilities, and it may be extended according to the co-owners’ desires in order to improve the beauty and comfort, if not the value, of their building.
The initial aim for the affected co-owners will clearly be to escape the status as “energy strainer,” hence the classifications in F and G of the DPE, to which the classification in E is ultimately appended by the deputies to the aforementioned legislation.
To provide visibility to the co-owners, the proposed activity must be costed. Prioritization by priority level will also allow for the top priority to be human health, followed by improved comfort and involvement in the community endeavor to decrease energy use.
The co-ownership stock in France tends to age since there is no legal duty to repair it, even if it is in the co-owners’ best interests to do so. Because of the visual enhancement and improved comfort, a well-insulated and restored building improves in value, and the goal may be to recoup the investment in labor. We can be certain that our multi-year strategy will enable this observation for families that have been able to spread the costs of implementation across time.