Government outlines plans to overhaul the EPC System

The UK government has launched a consultation aimed at overhauling the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) system, with plans to introduce multiple new metrics to better evaluate a property’s energy efficiency and carbon emissions.

The proposed changes aim to update the assessment of EPCs by introducing multiple factors that reflect a property’s energy performance instead of relying on a single measure. These include:

• Energy Cost: Helping individuals understand the financial implications of a building’s energy efficiency, enabling informed decisions about potential improvements.
• Carbon Emissions: Providing an estimate of the carbon emissions arising from the energy used in the building.
• Energy Use: Offering insights into overall energy consumption and identifying areas for efficiency enhancements.
• Fabric Performance: Assessing the thermal performance of a building’s envelope, promoting the importance of well-insulated, comfortable, and energy-efficient spaces.
• Heating System: Providing information on the efficiency and environmental impact of a building’s heating source, encouraging the adoption of cleaner technologies.
• Smart Readiness: Evaluating a building’s potential to integrate smart technologies that optimise energy consumption and allow consumers to benefit from cheaper smart tariffs.

These reforms aim to enhance the building energy performance framework across several key areas, including updating EPC metrics, refining requirements for EPCs and Display Energy Certificates (DECs), improving data management protocols, strengthening quality control, and revising Air Conditioning Inspection Reports (ACIRs).

Domestic EPCs will use four main metrics: fabric performance, heating system, smart readiness, and energy cost, with additional metrics offered as secondary information. Together, they will highlight critical aspects of a building’s energy performance, assisting users in identifying strengths and weaknesses.

There is also a suggestion to reduce the validity of EPCs from ten years to as little as two years to ensure that energy performance data remains current.

The consultation further aims to expand EPC requirements to cover Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), holiday lets, and listed buildings, proposing a two-year timeline for landlords to adapt to these new rules.

Any changes to EPC metrics will need to be integrated into the approved assessment methods currently in use, which include the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for new homes, Reduced Data SAP (RdSAP) for existing homes, and the National Calculation Methodology (NCM) for non-domestic buildings. These methods will be replaced by a new system called the Home Energy Model (HEM), with updated EPC metrics expected to be introduced alongside HEM in the second half of 2026. A consultation on the HEM methodology for producing EPCs is planned for 2025.

View Reforms to the Energy Performance of Buildings regime here.