EPC Ratings for Any UK Property

53.5%

of UK homes are rated EPC D or worse on the current scale.

If every home was upgraded to the assessor's recommended potential, only 4.1% would still sit at D or below. The average property could move 1.2 bands by carrying out the recommendations on its own certificate, gaining roughly 16.0 SAP points. That gap between current and potential is the upgrade headroom, and on this scale it is huge.

England

53.2%

D or worse

Wales

58.7%

D or worse

Source: Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities EPC register, refreshed 2 May 2026.

The A to G scale, in plain English

EPC ratings are bands derived from a SAP score out of 100 (where 100 is a net-zero new build). Here is what each band looks like in practice, with the share of the national EPC register currently in that band.

Band	SAP range	Share of UK	Description
A	92-100	0.7%	Net-zero new builds and a handful of deeply retrofitted homes. Cheap to run, low emissions.
B	81-91	12.6%	Modern new builds with good insulation and an efficient heating system. Bills are low.
C	69-80	33.2%	The target band most lenders, schemes and grant criteria are written around. Comfortable, reasonably efficient.
D	55-68	37.0%	The single most common band in the UK housing stock. Habitable, but typically a gas-heated home with average insulation.
E	39-54	12.6%	Below the legal minimum for new private rentals. Owner-occupiers can still live here; landlords face restrictions.
F	21-38	2.9%	Energy-inefficient. Old solid-wall homes, single-glazing, dated heating. Expect high bills.
G	1-20	0.9%	Worst-rated. Often unheated rooms, no insulation, or off-grid heating in poor condition. Real comfort cost.

Current versus potential rating

Every EPC has two scores. The first is what the property gets today. The second is what it could get if the assessor's recommended improvements were carried out: cavity wall insulation if the construction allows, loft insulation to current depth, low-energy lighting, an efficient heating system, double or triple glazing.

The gap between current and potential is what gives buyers leverage. A property at D-current and B-potential is genuinely upgradeable. A property already at C-current with C-potential isn't going much further without major retrofit, regardless of what the seller's listing claims.

If you wanted to know roughly where the housing stock could end up: with every home brought up to its assessor-recommended potential, the share at D or worse would drop from 53.5% to 4.1%.

What the EPC tells you (and what it doesn't)

It's a model, not a measurement. SAP estimates the energy a standardised household would use in this property. Your actual bills depend on you, the weather, and how often you turn the heating on.
It's about the building, not the kit. Solar panels, smart thermostats and electric vehicle chargers don't add much to the band. What moves the rating is insulation, glazing, and the heating system itself.
An EPC can be ten years old. Certificates last a decade, and a property that hasn't been sold or re-let in that time may be on an out-of-date assessment. The previous boiler and the current boiler may not be the same boiler.
Assessor variability is real. Two assessors visiting the same property on different days can produce slightly different scores. The methodology is standardised; the inputs (e.g. estimating the depth of loft insulation without opening it up) involve judgement.
"Recommendations" can be unrealistic. Some properties' theoretical potential involves measures that aren't practical in the real building (cavity wall insulation in solid-wall homes, ground-source heat pumps with no garden). Read the recommendations, don't just count them.

Older homes, worse ratings

The strongest single predictor of a poor EPC is the construction date. Homes built before insulation standards came in struggle to reach C without significant intervention. Here are the largest age cohorts in the EPC register and the share of each currently rated D or worse.

Construction era	Share rated D or worse	Distribution
England and Wales: 1950-1966	62.4%
England and Wales: 1900-1929	79.1%
England and Wales: 1930-1949	74.6%
England and Wales: 1967-1975	60.4%
England and Wales: before 1900	84.8%
England and Wales: 1983-1990	45.6%
England and Wales: 1976-1982	46.4%
England and Wales: 1996-2002	33.2%
England and Wales: 1991-1995	46.4%
England and Wales: 2003-2006	10.0%
England and Wales: 2007-2011	6.4%
2019	5.6%

What we see across the reports we've run

Among the properties checked on Move Insights with an EPC on file, around 53.8% are rated D or worse on the current scale. That's lower than the 53.5% you see across the full national EPC register. The likely reason: people checking properties pre-purchase tend to be looking at homes that are at least lettable or sellable, which biases towards more recently assessed (and on average slightly newer) stock.

The upgrade headroom is similar to the national pattern. The average property checked could rise by roughly 1.2 bands by carrying out the recommendations on its own certificate. The national average is around 1.2 bands.

Common questions

A qualified Domestic Energy Assessor visits the property, takes measurements, and runs the data through the government's Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) software. SAP scores out of 100, with a higher score meaning more efficient. The 100-point scale maps onto the A to G letter bands.

Current is what the property scores today, given its actual insulation, glazing, heating system and so on. Potential is what it could score if all the assessor's recommendations were carried out (loft insulation, new boiler, low-energy lighting, and so forth). The gap between the two is the upgrade headroom.

Ten years from the lodgement date. After ten years the certificate technically expires for legal purposes (e.g. if the property is being marketed for sale or rent), though the underlying property hasn't changed and the rating is usually still indicative. Many older EPCs in the register are out of date in the formal sense.

Yes when a property is sold, rented out, or built. The seller or landlord must commission and produce one. There is no requirement to commission a fresh EPC just because you live in a home, so a property that hasn't been sold or re-let in the last ten years may not have a current certificate.

EPC is a model based on the building, not a measurement of how you actually use it. A small efficient home occupied by a family of five who like the heating on will burn through more energy than a large inefficient home occupied by one person who is never in. The EPC tells you about the property; your bills tell you about you.

No. Our EPC data covers England and Wales (the DLUHC register). Scotland uses a separate register run by Scottish Government, which we do not currently include.

The UK's housing stock is old. Roughly half of homes were built before 1965, before serious insulation standards came in. A typical Victorian or post-war terrace with a modern condensing boiler and decent loft insulation tends to land at a D. Pushing a D into a C usually needs cavity wall insulation (where the wall type allows) or a heat pump, both of which are bigger interventions than a fresh boiler.

We refresh from the EPC register periodically. Our latest aggregate was 2 May 2026. New certificates appear as assessors lodge them; expired ones stay in the register but are flagged as out of date when accessed for legal purposes.

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