Energy Performance
Certificate (EPC)
An EPC certificate is mandatory for all rental properties and sales. Our accredited domestic energy assessors provide fast, accurate ratings valid for 10 years.
- Accredited Assessors
- Valid for 10 Years
- Fast 24h Turnaround
- MEES Advice Included
EPC Rates
Your EPC Certificate Guide
Everything a London landlord, seller or homeowner needs to know about the EPC certificate, in the order people usually ask it. Jump straight to the section you need.
- What is an EPC certificate?
- Why your property needs one
- How to improve your score
- MEES law and your legal duties
- Deadlines, exemptions and records
- Penalties for letting below band E
- Who needs an EPC certificate?
- HMOs, commercial and mixed use
- How it fits with your other checks
- Preparing for the assessment
- How to read your EPC certificate
- If your property is rated F or G
Quick Summary (AI & Voice Search Answers)
EPC Pricing
Flat fees based on property size. Includes government registry fee.
| Property Size | Price (Inc VAT) | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Studio Apartment | £89.99* | |
| 2-3 Bedrooms | £100.00* | |
| 4 Bedrooms | £130.00* | |
| 5 Bedrooms | £140.00* |
What is an EPC?
An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rates the energy efficiency of your property from A (Most Efficient) to G (Least Efficient). It also estimates energy costs and offers recommendations for improvement.
Since 2020, under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES), it is illegal to rent out a domestic property with an EPC rating of F or G. You must achieve at least an E rating.
Heating System
Assessing the boiler efficiency, controls (thermostats/programmers), and radiator types.
Insulation
Checking loft insulation depth, cavity wall insulation, and floor construction type.
Windows
Evaluating glazing type (single/double/triple) and the age of installation.
Lighting
Counting the percentage of energy-efficient lighting (LEDs) versus standard bulbs.
Why do I need it?
-
01
Marketing
You cannot market a property for rent or sale without commissioning an EPC.
-
02
Legal Compliance
Fines of up to £5,000 can be issued for renting a property rated F or G.
-
03
Tenant Info
Tenants must receive a copy of a valid EPC at the start of their tenancy.
Did you know?
An EPC certificate stays valid for 10 years and can be reused for several tenancies inside that period, provided no major changes are made to the property.
Why Your Property Needs an EPC Certificate
An EPC certificate is the only document that tells a tenant, a buyer or a lender how much energy your property is likely to use before they commit to it. It rates the building from band A to band G, sets out the estimated running costs, and lists the improvements that would move it up the scale.
For landlords it is also a gatekeeper. Under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard you cannot grant or continue a tenancy on a domestic property rated F or G unless a valid exemption has been registered, so the certificate effectively decides whether the property can legally earn income at all.
Sellers and letting agents need it just as early. You must have commissioned the assessment before the property is advertised, and the band has to appear in the listing itself, which is why a missing EPC certificate stalls a launch far more often than a poor rating does.
London housing stock makes the document unusually useful. Solid-wall Victorian conversions, 1930s semis with unfilled cavities and ex-local-authority flats on electric heating all behave very differently, and the assessment is the only reliable way to see which improvements are worth the money on your particular building.
There is a tenant-relations argument too. Energy is one of the largest lines in most renters budgets, and a home that can show a solid band lets faster, holds its rent better, and generates far fewer complaints about damp, draughts and unaffordable heating.
How to improve your EPC score?
Current Rating Example
Moving a property from an F to an E (or C) rating can often be done with cost-effective measures. Our assessors provide advice on:
- 1Replacing halogen bulbs with LEDs (Instant gain)
- 2Increasing loft insulation to 270mm
- 3Installing a smart thermostat or TRVs on radiators
- 4Filling cavity walls (Grants often available)
Every EPC certificate stays valid for ten years from the day it is lodged on the national register, so the work you do now shapes the band a tenant sees for a decade. Each recommended measure is shown with an indicative cost and a typical annual saving, which makes it straightforward to decide what is worth doing before the next assessment falls due.
Assessment Process
Fast, non-intrusive survey by a DEFA certified assessor.
Survey
Assessor visits to measure floor area and check construction.
Data Collection
Photographing heating systems, insulation, and lighting.
Calculation
Data entered into RdSAP software to generate rating.
Lodgement
Certificate lodged on the national government register.
EPC Certificate Law: MEES Rules for London Landlords
The MEES regulations behind your EPC certificate
An Energy Performance Certificate has been required whenever a home is built, sold or let since 2008, but the rule that gives the EPC certificate real teeth for landlords is the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard, introduced by the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015.
MEES applied to new tenancies and renewals from 1 April 2018 and was extended to all existing domestic tenancies from 1 April 2020. Since then it has been unlawful to let a domestic property in England or Wales rated F or G unless a valid exemption has been registered. Band E is the floor, not the target.
The assessment itself must be carried out by an accredited domestic energy assessor and lodged on the national Energy Performance of Buildings Register, which is what makes the document publicly checkable by a tenant, an agent or a council officer. The government explanation of the standard is published as landlord guidance on GOV.UK, and it repays ten minutes before a first assessment.
Proposals to raise the minimum band above E for privately rented homes have been consulted on more than once and remain proposed rather than in force. Treat any higher band you read about as a proposal under review, and check the current government guidance before you plan work around it.
EPC certificate deadlines, exemptions and record keeping
Most of the trouble landlords run into is about timing and paperwork rather than about the rating itself. These are the points that matter.
- Before you market. The assessment must be commissioned before the property is advertised for sale or rent, and you must make reasonable efforts to obtain the document within 7 days.
- In the advert. The energy rating has to be shown in the written particulars and in any online listing.
- To the tenant. A copy goes to the tenant at the start of the tenancy, free of charge.
- Ten-year validity. The document lasts ten years and can be reused for successive tenancies inside that period unless the property changes materially.
- Exemptions are registered, not assumed. Where an exemption applies it must be entered on the PRS Exemptions Register with supporting evidence. It is never automatic and it does not last indefinitely.
Keep the certificate with the tenancy file rather than in an email folder. When a council officer or a lender asks for it, finding it usually takes longer than the survey did.
Penalties for letting a property below band E
Local authorities enforce MEES. Where a landlord lets a domestic property rated F or G without a registered exemption, a financial penalty of up to £5,000 can be issued, and the authority may also publish details of the breach on the exemptions register.
The commercial cost usually arrives first. Agents will not list a property without a rating, mortgage lenders increasingly ask about the band before releasing funds on a buy-to-let, and a weak result hands a buyer an obvious lever at the enquiries stage. Booking the assessment early is far cheaper than explaining its absence later.
Who Needs an EPC Certificate?
Landlords, homeowners, buyers and sellers
For a private landlord in England the answer is straightforward: every property you let needs a valid EPC certificate, and it must sit at band E or above unless an exemption is registered. That covers flats, houses, converted maisonettes and purpose-built blocks, whether you manage them yourself or through an agent.
Sellers need one before the property goes on the market, and the rating has to appear in the listing. Buyers use it in the opposite direction, as an early read on what the heating is likely to cost and on how much fabric work an older building will need.
Homeowners who are neither selling nor letting have no legal duty at all, but the report remains the cheapest structured assessment of a building fabric that money can buy. If you are weighing up insulation, glazing or a heat pump, the recommendations page is a sensible place to start.
HMOs, commercial units and mixed-use buildings
Houses in multiple occupation usually need a single assessment for the whole building where the occupants share a kitchen or a bathroom. Where a room is genuinely self-contained behind its own lockable door, with its own facilities, it is treated as a separate dwelling and needs its own document.
Commercial premises are assessed on a different methodology and produce a non-domestic certificate, and MEES applies to them as well. Mixed-use buildings frequently need both: one report for the flats above and another for the shop or office below.
If you are not sure how your building should be split, talk to us before you book and we will scope it properly rather than sending an assessor to the wrong address.
How the EPC certificate fits with your other landlord checks
The energy assessment says nothing about electrical, gas or fire safety. Each of those has its own regime, its own qualified person and its own paperwork, and a compliant London tenancy normally needs several documents on file at the same time.
- EICR is the five-yearly electrical installation condition report required for every private rented home in England.
- Gas Safety Certificate (CP12) is the annual check of gas appliances and flues by a Gas Safe registered engineer.
- Fire risk assessment covers the fire precautions in the building and is expected for HMOs and common parts.
- Asbestos survey matters in communal areas and before any building work in a property built before the year 2000.
Most London landlords find it cheaper and far less disruptive to bundle these visits into one appointment. You can see everything we cover on the services page, compare fixed prices on the pricing page, or book online in a couple of minutes.
Preparing For and Reading Your EPC Certificate
Preparing for your EPC certificate assessment
The survey is non-intrusive and usually takes under an hour, but the assessor can only credit what can be seen or evidenced on the day. A little preparation regularly moves a property up a band for almost nothing.
- Find the paperwork. Cavity wall and loft insulation guarantees, boiler installation certificates, window FENSA certificates and solar panel commissioning documents all count as evidence. Without them the software falls back on the default assumption for the age of the building, which is nearly always worse than reality.
- Open the loft hatch. The assessor needs to see and measure the insulation depth. A hatch buried under storage means the depth is recorded as unknown.
- Clear access to the boiler and controls. Make, model, flue type and the presence of a programmer, room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves all feed the calculation.
- Change the bulbs first. The percentage of low-energy lighting is counted on the day. Swapping the last halogens for LEDs the morning before costs very little and is credited immediately.
- Unlock every room. Floor area is measured room by room, including any extension, conservatory or outbuilding heated from the same system.
If you cannot be there, we collect keys from agents right across London at no extra charge. Just tell us when you book the assessment.
How to read your EPC certificate
The document arrives digitally, lodged on the national register, normally within 24 hours of the survey. The front page carries the headline: a coloured bar chart running from band A at the top to band G at the bottom, showing the current score of the property alongside the potential score it would reach after the recommended improvements.
The score is a number out of 100 rather than a letter. Band A starts at 92, B at 81, C at 69, D at 55, E at 39 and F at 21, with band G covering everything below that. Because the bands are wide, a property can sit two points under a threshold and be well worth a small piece of work to lift.
Behind the chart sit the assumptions. Walls, roof, floor, windows, main heating, heating controls, hot water and lighting are each described and rated from very poor to very good, which is where a missing insulation guarantee shows up and the fastest way to see which element is dragging the score down.
The final section lists the recommended measures with indicative costs and typical annual savings. Treat it as a shopping list in priority order rather than a specification: it is generated by software from standard assumptions, so anything expensive is worth confirming with an installer before you commit.
What If Your EPC Certificate Says F or G?
A rating of F or G is not a fine and it is not the end of the tenancy. It is a to-do list with a legal consequence attached: until the property reaches band E, or a valid exemption is registered, you cannot lawfully grant a new tenancy or continue an existing one.
The good news is that most F and G properties in London are one or two straightforward measures away from compliance. The report you already hold names those measures, and the assessor can usually say on the day which of them moves the score furthest per pound spent.
The cost cap and registered exemptions
Where the recommended improvements cannot bring a domestic property up to band E within the £3,500 including VAT cost cap, a high-cost exemption may be available. Other exemptions cover cases where a required measure would devalue the property, where consent from a tenant, lender or planning authority has been refused, and where a new landlord has only just taken the property on.
None of them apply automatically. Every exemption has to be registered on the PRS Exemptions Register with supporting evidence, and most run for five years, after which the position has to be reassessed. Assuming an exemption without registering it is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes a landlord can make.
Getting from F to E, and beyond
In practice the same handful of measures does the work in most London properties, and the cheapest are the ones you can arrange yourself.
- Lighting: a full switch to LED is the fastest, cheapest gain available and is credited straight away.
- Loft insulation: topping up to 270mm is inexpensive and reliably worth several points on the score.
- Heating controls: a programmer, a room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves are treated as a package by the calculation.
- Cavity walls: filling unfilled cavities is one of the larger single gains, and grant funding is often available.
- Hot water and draughts: a properly jacketed cylinder and sealed gaps around doors and floors cost very little and still count.
Once the work is finished the property needs a fresh assessment to record the new band, because the register holds the document exactly as it was lodged. We re-assess improved properties at the same fixed prices shown above and can normally attend within a day or two of the work completing.
Frequently Asked Questions
An EPC is valid for 10 years. You can use the same certificate for multiple tenancies within that period, provided no major changes have been made to the property.
If you rent out individual rooms in a property (HMO) and they share facilities like a kitchen/bathroom, you usually only need one EPC for the whole house. If the room is self-contained (has its own kitchen/bathroom behind a lockable door), it may need its own EPC.
You cannot legally grant a new tenancy. You must carry out the recommended improvements to reach at least an E rating, unless you qualify for an exemption (e.g. if the cost of improvements exceeds £3,500).
No. You must have commissioned an EPC before you market the property for sale or rent. You must make reasonable efforts to get it within 7 days of marketing.
No, the survey is non-intrusive and purely visual. They will look in the loft, inspect the boiler, count lights, and measure rooms. They won't lift floorboards or drill walls.
Our Accreditations
Recognized and certified by the UK's leading property safety bodies.
Don't get stuck with a poor rating.
Book your EPC today. Fast turnaround for landlords and sellers in London.
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Service Areas in London
We cover all 32 London boroughs, including North London, East London, South London, West London, and central districts. Fast dispatch for: