Landlords have a number of concerns to deal with: damp, rogue infestations, and untenable tenants being chief among them.

But energy efficiency is clearly not too high up on the to-do list, if a recent survey by the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) is anything to go by.

The landlording body found that more than half (51 per cent) of property owners who purchase then let rent buildings had not even heard of the government's recently announced Green Deal.

And more than a third (36 per cent) admitted they had no clue as to the efficiency rating of the properties they owned.

Ian Potter, operations manager at ARLA, said: "At a time when energy prices are rising and average household disposable income is reportedly at a four-year low, making a rental property more energy efficient could mean a big difference for tenants."

Especially as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) revealed this month that those tenants renting in the private sector were more likely to incur higher energy bills than homeowners - often because they have little say or control of the energy efficiency measures put in place in a property.

And National Home Improvement Council director Andrew Leech urged the government to provide more incentive for landlords to provide such equipment - be it energy-monitoring devices or LED lighting - before they can hope to see a change to those reports.

"There is an irony about it because the government is hoping to be one of the greenest governments on record," he said. "They are encouraging us to upgrade the quality of our homes and their energy efficiency because that is a way of saving money on your utility bills as you can reduce those considerably on an annual basis.

"But if you haven't got the money to spend on improving the property then you won't gain the benefits of reducing the cost of utility prices. There must be more incentive but no matter how much incentive you provide, unless the money is there, they can't do it," he continued.