Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates: change note
Published 31 July 2025
Applies to England and Wales
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The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has previously informed users of changes to the Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates (EPC) quarterly statistics. This note provides information on recent improvements to the data quality leading to a reduction in the number of EPC lodgements across quarters.
The Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates quarterly statistics are based on EPCs issued for domestic and non-domestic buildings and Display Energy Certificates (DECs) issued for buildings occupied by public authorities. The certificates are lodged on the Energy Performance of Buildings Registers (“the Register”) for England and Wales.
What was done to improve the data quality?
Users are informed that in addition to the changes made to improve the quality of the data last quarter (see previous change note for Q1 2025), duplicate certificates have now been removed from the new dwellings dataset to provide de-duplicated figures. These changes are made to the full dataset for both England and Wales, but just for the purposes of these quarterly statistics, MHCLG cannot change data on the Register itself.
For more details on the full data cleaning process we now carry out on the data, see below and the technical note published alongside this release.
New dwelling EPCs de-duplication
It is a legal requirement for all new build domestic dwellings in England and Wales to have an EPC when completed. However, EPCs may be lodged earlier based on the planned design and could be lodged again if there is a change during construction. It is therefore not unusual for a new dwelling to have more than one EPC lodged on the Register.
Where a building has more than one EPC certificate and the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the first two lines of the address are the same, but the lodgement date is different, the certificate with the most recent lodgement date is kept and the duplicates are removed from the dataset for the quarterly statistics. The reason for using both address variables is to ensure that neighbouring properties are not accidently removed from the dataset as duplicates.
We have found that Changes to Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates, Quarterly Statistics neighbouring properties can be incorrectly allocated the same UPRN during address matching, or by energy assessors when they create EPCs for flats. Therefore, the use of the first two lines of the address as well as the UPRN to identify duplicate certificates ensures that EPCs of different properties are not incorrectly removed.
This stage of the process removed 90,212 records.
| Type of certificate | Number removed |
|---|---|
| New dwellings | 90,212 |
How this impacts the statistics
The number of EPC lodgements for the new dwellings data is lower across all quarters/years compared to previous publications. The reduction will be around 2% overall for the full dataset of England and Wales EPCs.
See Table 1 numbers for each year.
Table 1: Reduction in EPC lodgements across years for England and Wales
| Year | Certificates removed |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 484 |
| 2024 | 3,282 |
| 2023 | 4,624 |
| 2022 | 3,831 |
| 2021 | 3,401 |
| 2020 | 4,578 |
| 2019 | 7,777 |
| 2018 | 7,964 |
| 2017 | 6,274 |
| 2016 | 5,877 |
| 2015 | 6,281 |
| 2014 | 6,132 |
| 2013 | 4,719 |
| 2012 | 5,495 |
| 2011 | 5,596 |
| 2010 | 5,562 |
| 2009 | 5,484 |
| 2008 | 2,851 |
What this means for users
The statistical release published on 31 July 2025 will report on the new figures following the amendments to the data processing. Live tables will be revised historically, however previous statistical releases will not be changed.
Data will look lower across all quarters for new dwellings only.
Users now have a dataset that gives a more accurate picture of the number of EPC lodgements for new dwellings. Yet, for the most authoritative figures of new housing supply, see the Net additional dwellings statistics. Additionally, we have published a dataset Housing supply: indicators of new supply, England: January to March 2025 which includes an EPC-based estimate of net additions, adjusted for demolitions.
The figures below show how the data has changed across financial years compared to the Net additional dwellings statistics. Figure 1 shows the comparison to the old methodology, prior to full de-duplication and Figure 2 shows the difference in lodgements using the new full de-duplication methodology:
Figure 1: EPC lodgements for new dwellings, comparison between net additions and previous methodology, pre-deduplication EPC quarterly statistics, by financial year
Figure 2: EPC lodgements for new dwellings, comparison between net additions and new de-duplication methodology EPC quarterly statistics, by financial year
