With effect from the 9th January listed buildings no longer require an Energy Performance certificate (EPC) prior to being sold or let.
The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) have re-issued their guides to EPCs for the construction, sale and let of dwellings and non-dwellings to remove “gold-plating where possible” that was “implemented by the previous administration in 2008”.
The precise wording, or rather imprecise wording, caused some confusion in the industry. The relevant paragraph is as follows:
“Additionally, in line with the removal of unnecessary gold-plating, from 9 January 2013, the following types of buildings will not require an EPC:
• buildings and monuments officially protected as part of a designated environment or because of their special architectural or historic merit in so far as compliance with certain energy efficiency requirements would unacceptably alter their character or appearance”
This would have been fairly clear if the author had stopped after “historic merit”, but oh no, they had to carry on with “in so far as…” (a phrase designed to confuse the reader) and then talk about compliance with energy efficiency requirements. This doesn’t make sense, as it isn’t mandatory to implement any of the requirements in an EPC.
The DCLG have now clarified their guidance to make it clear that any building which has been listed by English Heritage (or its Welsh equivalent) is exempt from the requirement to have an EPC on its sale or rent.
Note that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), still require an EPC to be performed for a building, if the owner wants to benefit from the upper Feed In Tariff (FIT) rates or any domestic Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) payments.