Your EPC has expired. Do you actually need a new one?

EPCs last ten years and then quietly lapse. Nobody writes to you about it.

Plenty of landlords assume that's a problem they need to fix. Usually it isn't, and occasionally fixing it is the wrong move. But there's one reason to get a new one that's worth real money, and hardly anyone seems to know about it.

When an expired EPC genuinely doesn't matter

The rules bite when you do something with the property, not when you own it.

You need a valid certificate to sell, and you need one to let to a new tenant. If a tenancy has been running throughout and you haven't remarketed, there's no general duty to replace one that's run out.

Here's the part that surprises people. The minimum standard rules only apply to properties that are legally required to hold a certificate. No live requirement, no certificate, and the standard isn't currently biting on you either.

Some landlords have worked this out and let theirs lapse on purpose.

I'd be careful leaning on that. The government has consulted on making rented homes hold a valid certificate at all times, and if that lands the whole approach stops working overnight. It's a gap in the current rules rather than a plan.

The good reason to get one anyway

Assessments changed on 15 June 2025, and it's the biggest change to how EPCs are worked out in over a decade.

The short version is that the new method measures things the old one used to assume. Every window gets measured and its orientation recorded rather than guessed. Room-in-roof gets proper categories. And the default heat loss figures that had been quietly marking down flats and terraced houses have been corrected.

Which means the same property, with nothing done to it, can come back with a different number.

If you're sitting two or three points under a C on a certificate from 2019, a reassessment is somewhere around £60 to £120. Against measures that run into thousands, that's the first thing I'd try, not the last.

It's genuinely worth checking the old certificate for the word "assumed" too. When an assessor can't inspect something they record the worst reasonable case. "Solid brick, as built, no insulation (assumed)" on a house that turns out to have a filled cavity is the difference between a big bill and a small one, and it's the kind of thing a new assessment picks up.

When getting a new one is the wrong move

This cuts both ways, and anyone telling you a reassessment is a free win is overselling it.

Some properties score worse under the new method. And a new certificate starts a fresh ten year clock on whatever number comes back.

So if you're mid-tenancy, sitting on an old certificate rated E or above, not planning to sell, and you've no particular reason to think a new assessment would go your way, then voluntarily commissioning one can land you with a worse rating and pull you into scope of rules that weren't applying to you.

That's a real trade-off rather than a technicality. Worth thinking about before you book anyone.

The short version

Get a new one if:

• You're selling or letting to a new tenant, because you have no choice
• You're a few points under a C on a pre-June-2025 certificate, because the methodology change might do the work for you
• Your certificate leans on assumptions you think are wrong
• You need to register an exemption, which you can't do without a current assessment

Leave it if:

• You're mid-tenancy with no plans to remarket
• You're comfortably above the threshold already and nothing has changed
• You suspect a reassessment would come back worse

Check the date before you do anything

The thing to look at first is when your certificate was lodged. Anything before 15 June 2025 was worked out under the old method, so the number on it may not be the number you'd get today.

Put a postcode into our checker and we'll flag it if yours predates the change, alongside what the cheapest route to a C rating actually looks like.