Private Renters EPC Consultation - Impact on Assessors

The ‘Improving the Energy Performance of Privately Rented Homes’ consultation, more commonly known as PRS MEES targets, is open for public feedback until 2nd May.

The consultation proposes to increase minimum energy performance standards on existing houses.

This post is for my friends and colleagues in the world of rdSAP.. we’ve got some big changes ahead!

If you’re a landlord who needs new Energy Performance Certificate on your houses, an rdSAP assessor will come to your aid.

Today, properties that achieve the worst EPC ratings (F & G) require improvements. As covered in my last post, the proposal is to change this to a C-equivalent using a new multi-metric EPC rating.

The consultation suggests new targets will be enforced from 2028 on new tenancies, and 2030 on existing tenancies. But to produce these new-look EPCs, you’ll need to use the new Home Energy Model calculation tool, not SAP.

HEM is going to be launched with the new version of Approved Document Part L later this year, with OCDEA SAP assessors (for new-builds) being the first group to upskill and convert from SAP to HEM.

It’s proposed that from late 2026 😳, HEM will be available with an existing dwelling wrapper, so DEA assessors can use it for new surveys. Just to add some perspective, it's been less than a year since rdSAP10 was released after several years of development. Seems that methodology is going to have a very short shelf-life!

To complicate matters further, EPCs are valid for 10 years. If we transition to HEM from late 2026, that means old-style EPCs will still be in circulation until 2036.

The consultation suggests that, where landlords have DEFG rated old-style EPCs, they’ll need to pay for a new EPC, generated using HEM, even if their existing EPC is still valid.

We don’t yet know what the targets of the new EPC are going to look like, or how HEM is going to deal with the energy performance of existing dwellings, so gauging the complexity of surveys when we transition to HEM is a big unknown.

Also unknown is how the same dwelling will perform when compared against the old and new systems.

It's proposed the main EPC metric will change from running costs to fabric performance. So, for example, a house that has awful levels of insulation but a really cheap heating system will perform worse under the new system.

There are plenty of unknowns about the technical aspects of these changes, but if Government stick to these optimistic timeframes, DEA assessors will be forced to adopt HEM within the next two years.

Here's a link to the consultation:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-energy-performance-of-privately-rented-homes-2025-update