Friday 2 February 2024

Call for overhaul of EPCs

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has released a report urging reforms to Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to accelerate the decarbonisation of the UK's built environment.

Titled "Energy Performance Certificates: Enabling the Home Energy Transition," the report proposes several key changes, including reducing the validity of EPCs to five years, introducing new headline ratings and enabling more detailed data for retrofit planning while respecting privacy.

Additionally, the report emphasises the pivotal role of Domestic Energy Assessors in ensuring accuracy and suggests a review of their training and continuous professional development.

To address the 40% of homes without an EPC, particularly the least energy-efficient ones, the report suggests developing provisional EPC ratings to aid local authorities and homeowners in identifying retrofit opportunities.

Highlighting that only 5% of people used EPC advice in 2022, the report recommends making this advice more user friendly to enhance the EPC's utility.

Gillian Charlesworth, Chief Executive of the BRE, said: "EPCs cover 60% of UK homes and are a key source of information used in planning retrofit programmes and in government policies.

"But too often home buyers and sellers see the certificates as just a bureaucratic necessity. With targeted reforms, the government can ensure the EPC can really achieve its potential, as a trusted starting point for advice and information on how we can all make our homes better."