Understanding An EPC Certificate

At the very top of an EPC you will find the property address, the date the EPC is valid until or the date the EPC expired, the current energy rating band, the property type and total floor area in m2.

This is what most people look at but there is a lot more information on an EPC that is informative and very. There are is a variety of links at the top of the EPC that help you navigate around the EPC quickly, print the EPC and share the EPC by email. There is a link called ‘guidance for landlords on the regulations and exemptions‘ in the section ‘Rules on letting this property’. This link takes you to a new page on the Gov.Uk website that provides guidance on how to comply with the 2018 ‘Minimum Level of Energy Efficiency’ standard (EPC band E).

If you do decide to print an EPC it can be a lot of pages. One of the reasons that the EPCs became e-certificates was to reduce the need to print them as they are available online all of the time.

The average rating across England and Wales is D60. This is largely due to the age of a lot of the UKs housing stock. There are a significant number of Victorian properties in some cities across the UK and a lot of properties built pre and post war that were not insulated when they were built. Many of these properties have not had insulation fitted retrospectively and many that have other inefficient features such as single glazing.

This chart will seem familiar as it is the same rating chart that is used on many electrical goods to present how energy efficient they are.

Each feature gets a rating based on how energy efficient it is – Very Poor, Poor, Average, Good, Very Good. Ratings are not based on how well the feature actually works or its condition.

For example the certificate might show the heating system as a mains gas powered boiler with a ‘Good’ rating. This is based on the make and model of the actual boiler which is captured during the assessment and entered into the EPC software and not whether the boiler is in good working order.

This isn’t an exact science, there are over 28 million households across the UK and we all use our heating and lighting differently but it does give a good indication of what savings could be made if you were to complete the suggested steps for improving this property’s energy rating, found further down the certificate.

The snapshot shows an example taken from an EPC produced in 2023.
The costs, savings and ‘energy needed’ are based on the information captured in the EPC assessment, including the size of the property, the type of heating and lighting present and how well the property is insulated.

There is an additional rating to demonstrate the properties environmental impact, again on the A to G scale, A being the best rating and G being the worst.

There is also an estimation of how much the properties carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced by and how that would impact the environmental impact rating if you were to complete the suggested steps for improving this property’s energy rating, found further down the certificate.

The snapshot shows an example taken from an EPC produced in 2023. The carbon emissions are based on the information captured in the EPC assessment, including the size of the property, the type of heating and lighting present and how well the property is insulated.

The snapshot shows the first few recommendations from an EPC produced in 2023. The recommendations are automatically generated based on the information captured in the EPC assessment.

For example if there is no gas supply to the property, any recommendations about heating the property will be based on electric systems only. Insulation will only be recommended if there is no insulation present or any existing insulation could be improved upon.

Sometimes there are just one or two recommendations, sometimes there are many. It all depends on the existing property and the elements of it that impact the energy rating.