The EPC Rule Agents Break Every Week

The Energy Performance Certificate is treated as paperwork for the solicitor and it is not — it is a marketing precondition. The rule is short, it is enforced by Trading Standards, and the two ways agents fall foul of it are entirely avoidable.

What the rule requires

An EPC must be commissioned before a property is marketed, and the seller or landlord is responsible for having one. In practice the agent arranges it, and in practice the agent is the one Trading Standards contacts.

The energy rating must be included in the particulars where they are produced in any medium. That includes the portal listing, the printed sheet and the window card.

Certificates last ten years and can be reused within that period, so the first thing to check is the public register rather than commissioning a new one.

The common failure is marketing before the certificate exists — a property listed on a Friday because the vendor is impatient, with the assessor booked for the following week.

Where agents get caught

The second failure is producing marketing material that omits the rating entirely, particularly social posts and video, which people do not think of as particulars.

Some property types are exempt, including certain listed buildings where compliance would unacceptably alter them, but the exemption is narrower than agents assume and should not be relied on casually.

Rental properties carry a separate minimum standard, and letting a property below the minimum without a registered exemption is a different and more serious problem than a missing certificate.

The register is public and searchable by postcode, so a buyer, a competitor or a Trading Standards officer can check your listing against it in under a minute.

Making it routine

Put the EPC check into your instruction checklist at the same point as identity verification. It is a two-minute lookup that prevents the whole category of problem.

If a property genuinely cannot be assessed before marketing, the safe course is to delay marketing, not to market and hope. That conversation with a vendor is easier than the one with an enforcement officer.

For video specifically, put the rating in the description rather than trying to fit it on screen. The obligation is that it accompanies the particulars, not that it is legible in the first three seconds.