Energy Company Obligation ECO1, Nationwide

Measured across our retrofit programmes

  • 2,493homes with a post-works EPC
  • +11average SAP points gained
  • D → Caverage band movement
  • 99.6%finish at band C or better

Crawford & Co assessed and coordinated these homes. Figures cover every programme where works are complete and a post-works EPC has been lodged, September 2026, and are not specific to this project.

Overview

ECO1 ran from January 2013 to March 2015 — the first phase of the Energy Company Obligation, and the point at which the obligation model replaced CERT and CESP. Crawford & Co Surveyors provided assessment and coordination work under it.

Crawford & Co Surveyors provides retrofit assessment, retrofit design and PAS 2035 coordination under the Energy Company Obligation. ECO funds measures in the homes that need them most — low-income and vulnerable households, and the least efficient properties — which makes accurate assessment the difference between a measure that helps and a measure that causes harm.

Our assessors and coordinators are directly employed rather than subcontracted, and work to an in-house assessment and coordination system built above the PAS 2035 requirements across more than 25 schemes. Coordination runs on our own system with no per-property software fee, so scheme funding stays in the homes rather than in licences.

Ryan
Project Manager

Strategy

Fabric

ECO properties are frequently the hardest in the stock: older, harder to treat, and often carrying defects that have gone unaddressed for years. Assessment establishes what the building can actually carry before any measure is specified. Pre-existing defects are the rule rather than the exception on this kind of stock: dampness, condensation and mould, cavity wall tie failure, roof slumping and spread, timber decay and lintel failure. Every one of those has to be resolved before insulation goes on. Identifying them at assessment is what makes enabling works a planned item rather than a mid-programme surprise. Measures are then specified per property: loft, room-in-roof and flat-roof insulation, cavity wall insulation, external or internal wall insulation, underfloor insulation, and replacement windows and doors.

Service

Ventilation is specified with airtightness rather than after it. In ECO properties, where damp and condensation are often already present, getting that sequence wrong makes an existing problem worse — so ventilation provision forms part of the same specification as the insulation. Heating measures are sized against the demand the fabric work leaves.

Renewables

Where a property suits it, solar PV is added after the fabric measures, so that generation offsets a demand already reduced rather than masking one that has not been. Roof orientation, structural capacity and the condition of the existing covering all decide suitability, and the assessment records that rather than assuming it.

Vital Statistics

Each assessment records the property’s construction and its modelled performance before and after the proposed measures — space-heating demand in kWh/m² per year, carbon in kg per year, and estimated energy cost. Figures are held per property rather than averaged across the programme, so the client can see which homes moved furthest and where demand remains. Full per-property data is available to the client. That modelling is also what evidences each measure against the scheme’s funding criteria, so the assessment record and the compliance record are the same document.

Detailing

ECO work is audited, and the paperwork is the compliance. Assessments are quality-checked by a coordinator before design, measures are modelled against the scheme’s requirements, and documentation is assembled as the work proceeds so that TrustMark lodgement is straightforward. Our retrofit condition report was developed in house and approved by both the scheme provider and TrustMark. The work behind it contributed to our managing director’s appointment to the BS 40104 steering group — the British Standard for retrofit assessment. Where PAS 2035 leaves a technical question genuinely open, we take it up with the standard’s authors rather than guess.

Further Data

Standards

PAS 2035 / PAS 2030

Comfort

The households ECO reaches are often the ones for whom a cold, damp home is already a health issue. Warmer, drier and more affordable to run — with ventilation that works without the resident having to manage it — is the point of the work. These are occupied homes, so assessment visits are designed to capture everything needed in one appointment.

Monitoring

Coordinators quality-check every assessment before it reaches design, and the scheme runs with a live view shared between client, designer and installers so that discrepancies surface in days rather than at handover. Regular review meetings with client, designer and installers run for its duration. Post-completion documentation is prepared for TrustMark lodgement through secure data sharing.

Social Value

Shaun, Crawford & Co SurveyorsShaunSocial value leadDuring this project Shaun was on a Business Administration Apprenticeship, funded directly from this contract.

Read about the apprentices, placements and interns we have supported

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