Energy Performance Certificate Ratings
Posted by Nigel Farren on 04/06/2010 7 comments
Database of EPC ratings so consumers can compare ratings of homes they are considering buying or renting.
Comments (7)
EPC Database and API
As far as I know, in order for an estate agent to even begin marketing a property for sale, they must have an EPC certificate for this property. Most of these EPC's are now ordered electronically online or via an API to a servicwe proivder. In order to market their properties for sale, most estate agents are using property portals such as RightMove, Vebra, Zoopla etc. that also have to display this information alongside the property.
I'm not sure it would be too much work for these larger companies to extract the data from the EPC certificates and feed this into a national database of EPC information against property house number and postcode. That way the data is stored and a central API for third party systems could be written to extract and mashup this data.
It would be a very handy tool for our business that provides online conveyancing quotes and comparison of solicitors and licensed conveyancers. (http://www.theconveyancingnetwork.com/index.cfm/get-a-quote/)
We have a development team in house that if somebody could get the funding to build such a database, we could contribute some time and resource to this.
The Conveyancing Network - www.theconveyancingnetwork.com
New CLG guidance
Actually that database already exists. It's operated by Landmark under contract to the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG).
The issue is that the bulk data is not freely available for commercial re-use, partly because CLG maintains that it is "personal" data as the property details can be linked to individuals.
Yesterday CLG published guidance on access to bulk EPC data for "authorised recipients", as defined in new regulations. The information is at the links below:
Making energy performance certificate and related data publicly available
2012 Changes to the Energy Performance of Buildings Framework
The Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections)(England and Wales)(Amendment) Regulations 2012
Download individual Energy Performance Certificates
As of today members of the public can download Energy Performance Certificates for individual addresses from these two websites (maintained by Landmark on behalf of CLG):
Domestic Energy Performance Certificate Register
Non-Domestic Energy Performance Register
Certificates can be retrieved by address, i.e. you no longer need to know the certificate number, so this is a big improvement in accessibility to the EPC information for potential homebuyers and tenants.
As noted above however the bulk data is available only to "authorised recipients", and there is also a charge for the data. That means the EPC database is still not by any means "open data".
EPC Register
The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) maintains a database of Energy Performance Certificates. Individual certificates are accessible on a website here:
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:
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:
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
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.
HIPS
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.
EPC Ratings
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.