An Energy Performance Certificate is valid for ten years from the date it is lodged on the national register. Not ten years from when the assessor visited, and not ten years from when you were sent the PDF: from the lodgement date printed on the certificate itself.
The short version
Ten years. You can look yours up free on the government EPC register by postcode. A valid certificate is still not enough if the rating is below the minimum for letting, or if you have done work that would improve it and you want the register to say so.
How to check whether you already have one
Search the government's EPC register by postcode. Every domestic certificate lodged in England and Wales since 2008 is there, free, with the rating, the expiry date and the recommended improvements. A great many landlords commission a new assessment for a property that already has a valid one, because nobody checked.
Two things to note. A certificate stays on the register for its full ten years even if the property has been sold or improved since, so what is published may be out of date in practice. And if a property has never been marketed since 2008, it may have no certificate at all.
When you actually need one
- Before a property is marketed for sale or to let. The certificate has to be commissioned before marketing begins, and the rating shown in the advert.
- At the start of a new tenancy, when the tenant must be given a copy.
- When the existing certificate has expired, or there has never been one.
- Some grant schemes and lender products ask for a current certificate regardless of whether the old one has expired.
Three times a valid EPC still is not enough
The rating is below the letting minimum
A privately rented home in England and Wales generally needs a rating of E or better to be let, under the minimum energy efficiency standard, with a small set of exemptions that have to be registered. A valid certificate showing an F or a G does not make the property lettable. See what an EPC rating of D actually means for where the thresholds are heading.
You have improved the property
Insulation, a new boiler, heating controls or glazing will not change the published rating on their own. The register still shows the old figure until a new assessment is lodged. If the rating matters to you, for a sale, a tenant, or a lender, the work has to be followed by a new certificate.
The certificate does not reflect the property any more
Extensions, conversions and changes of heating system can all move a property materially away from what was assessed. A ten-year-old certificate on a property that has since been extended is technically valid and practically misleading.
Who is allowed to produce one
Only an accredited Domestic Energy Assessor, working to a standard methodology and lodging the result on the national register. You cannot produce your own, and neither can a builder, an electrician or a letting agent unless they hold the accreditation. That is worth knowing when somebody offers you a cheap certificate without a visit.
We are building this arm and will not take a booking until the accreditation is on our record. Until then, register interest on the EPC page and any accredited assessor can help you now.
Written by The Surveyor Co, a trading name of LW Renovation Group Ltd, Lincoln. This guide describes how records are written and read; it is not legal advice. Where a deposit scheme, lease or insurer sets a rule, that rule wins.