FHS Launch - Impact on EPCs

With the Future Homes Standard set to go live across England from March 2027, housebuilders will need to design in PV panels and install heat pumps to the vast majority of new buildings.

That’s going to have a positive impact on Energy Performance Certificates... for now.

Most FHS compliant homes will happily achieve A ratings using SAP10.3… and many will receive ratings above 100 just by being Part L compliant.

The only time we’ll see new-builds with lower ratings is when they don’t have lots of PV (such as a high-rise building) or if we can convince SAP to give us a pass by means other than a heat pump.

A terrace of houses with solar panels and air source heat pumps as standard

But EPCs as we know them will soon be phased out.

EPC Reform, featuring a three rating dashboard and calculated using the Home Energy Model, are expected to launch late next year

This is in readiness for changes planned to the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) regulations in 2030 that will effect all privately and socially rented properties in England and Wales.

At this stage, we don’t know exactly how FHS compliant homes will perform under the new EPC ratings, but we have a good idea:

🧱 The first EPC target will just consider fabric performance. It won’t care about your heat pump and it won’t care about your PV. We’re expecting this value to be based on the FEE score.

The grading of this metric hasn’t been confirmed yet, but the expectation is all new homes will achieve As and Bs… homes with better levels of insulation and lower air test results will be more likely to get an A.

♨️ The second EPC target considers the heating system – both efficiency, and the fuel it uses.

A home that gets all it’s heating and hot water from a high efficiency heat pump would, again, be looking at As and Bs.

The consultation suggests homes with direct electric heating (panels, storage etc) would be capped at a D at best. We’ll have to wait for the Government response to see if that rule makes the final cut.

⚡ And the third metric, Smart Readiness, ranks a dwelling on how it generates, stores and uses it’s electricity supply.

Homes with lots of PV, batteries, smart tariffs and bidirectional EV chargers will perform the best, but quite how the ratings are graded remains to be seen.

🟢 A newly built FHS compliant house should expect to comfortably score a high A-rated EPC under the current system.

❓ But that's unlikely to translate to an AAA rating under the new design.

When HEMv2 is released (date unknown.. we’re still waiting on HEMv1), that will be our first opportunity to properly explore how the new EPC ratings react to specific house designs.