Reviewed 23 October 2026 by Ashley Crawford MSc MRICS MCIOB, Founder and Chairperson, Crawford & Co Surveyors.
If you own a rented property in England or Wales, you have probably seen a version of this story that gives you the wrong date. Here is the current position, with the parts that are settled separated from the parts that are not.
The short answer
Energy Performance Certificates are being redesigned. The single A–G rating is being replaced as the headline by four separate measures, and the new-style certificate is now expected in the second half of 2027. Separately, every privately rented home in England and Wales must reach the equivalent of EPC band C by 1 October 2030. Those are two different dates doing two different jobs, and most of the confusion online comes from treating them as one.
What happened to October 2026?
The reformed EPC was originally due in October 2026. On 9 March 2026, following engagement with industry on the delivery timeline, the Government moved the launch to the second half of 2027 and said it would agree a firm date and a shared implementation plan with the devolved administrations by summer 2026. That summer has now passed, and at the time of writing no specific launch date has been published. A great deal of advice online, including material published this year, still quotes October 2026. It is out of date.
What the new certificate will show
Instead of one headline rating, a reformed domestic EPC will report four metrics:
- Fabric performance: how well the building holds heat, through walls, roof, floors and windows.
- Heating system: the efficiency and carbon impact of how the property is heated.
- Energy cost: retained because it is what most people actually want to know.
- Smart readiness: how well the property can work with smart technology.
The familiar A–G rating is not being abolished. The Government has confirmed it will retain the legacy Energy Efficiency Rating so that new certificates can be compared with existing ones and so that existing regulations continue to function. For non-domestic property, the carbon-based Environmental Impact Rating remains the headline metric.
How long will an EPC last?
Ten years, unchanged. A shorter validity period was raised at consultation and has not been taken forward. Certificates already in issue keep their ten-year life, and reformed certificates will have the same.
One change that arrives quietly: EPCs at the point of marketing
Under the reformed regime, a valid EPC will be required at the point a property is marketed, rather than within the current window after marketing begins. For anyone letting or selling at pace, that is a scheduling change worth knowing about now: the assessment has to be booked before the listing goes live, not alongside it.
The deadline landlords must diarise: 1 October 2030
The Warm Homes Plan, published on 21 January 2026 and backed by up to £15bn, confirmed that privately rented homes in England and Wales must meet the equivalent of EPC band C by 1 October 2030. The earlier proposal to phase this, with new tenancies from 2028 and all tenancies from 2030, has been dropped in favour of a single date. A cost cap of £10,000 per property applies. The legislation itself is targeted for 2027; the compliance date does not move with it.
Compliance will be judged against the new metrics rather than the old rating: a fabric performance requirement as the primary measure, plus either heating system or smart readiness as a secondary one.
What that means in practice
Because fabric is the primary measure, the work that counts is insulation, glazing and draught-proofing rather than a boiler swap on its own. A property with a brand-new gas boiler and uninsulated solid walls is exactly the case that will struggle, and it is common in the Victorian terraced stock across Nottingham, Derby and the wider East Midlands.
What we would and would not do now
We would get an accurate picture of the fabric: what the walls actually are, whether cavities are filled, what the loft and floors are doing. That assessment holds its value regardless of which methodology the certificate ends up using, because the building does not change when the paperwork does.
We would not rush major spend purely to chase a rating before the reformed methodology is published. The scoring is changing, the launch date is not fixed, and grant support under the Warm Homes Plan is still being rolled out. Work that genuinely improves the fabric will count under any version of the rules; work chosen to game the old score may not.
We would start early rather than late. 2030 sounds distant, but a national deadline concentrates demand for a finite number of installers and assessors into the eighteen months before it.
What is still unsettled
The Government has deferred a number of matters to a further response: how the rules apply to HMOs, short-term lets and heritage properties, the validity of Display Energy Certificates, and parts of the quality-assurance regime. If you own property in those categories, the honest position today is that the detail is not yet published.
Talk to us
If you would like an accurate picture of where a property stands, whether that is an EPC assessment, a retrofit assessment or a Level 2 or Level 3 survey, our team can advise on what suits the building.
Last reviewed 23 October 2026. We will update this page when the Government publishes a launch date.
Sources: Reforms to the Energy Performance of Buildings regime, partial government response (GOV.UK); Warm Homes Plan, 21 January 2026; Government announcement of 9 March 2026 moving the launch to the second half of 2027.
