Energy Performance Certificate Ratings

The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) maintains a database of Energy Performance Certificates. Individual certificates are accessible on a website here:

EPC Register

https://www.epcregister.com/

but only under certain circumstances, e.g. if you are an owner or tenant of the property or considering buying or renting the property.

Although the Data Protection Act is sometimes given as a reason for not making EPCs more widely available to the public, there is some debate as to whether EPCs actually include personal data:

Decision Notice FS50384153 (ICO, September 2011)

http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/decisionnotices/2011/fs_50384153...

The relationship between property information and personal information under the DPA is in general a grey area. For example it seems inconsistent to treat energy performance ratings for a domestic property as personal data, but not to treat the price paid for that property as personal data.

The Government carried out a privacy impact assessment on this subject last year:

'Making energy performance certificate and related data publicly available: Privacy impact assessment' (CLG, January 2011)

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/epcdatapia

The real sticking point is that the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations currently prohibit disclosure of the Energy Performance Certificate except as set out in those Regulations. If the Government was minded to make EPCs more widely available it could probably do so by amending the regulations.

Energy Performance Certificate rating is to record how energy efficient a property is and to measure its impact on environment. Knowing EPC rating of a property or house before buying of renting is really important. By knowing the EPC rating we will get a clear idea about how energy efficient the property is. It’s a good think that now a database that consists of the EPC rating is available now so that people can search the EPC ratings of properties before buying or renting. Anybody please share the link to the database of EPC ratings so that people can search for a properties EPC rating.

With the end of the Home information packs I thought that this data would become redundant but when we came to put our house on the market we found that we still needed a EPC so it seems like this data will continue to be available and updated. I do not think there are any data protection issues here as it is not the people in the house but the house itself that the data is about. The DPA does not cover privacy for data on buildings - only people.

Data protection laws mean a public access database of EPC ratings is unlikely, however most estate agents already display the EPC ratings of all homes they are marketing. What I would loke to see is more publicly accessible information regarding the overall dataset gathered by EPC surveys.