Your Type of Home

Home Energy by Home Type and Household: The Full UK Guide

Every home's energy story is different, and the differences are not just about the building. A leaseholder in a 1960s block, a tenant in a terraced house, an owner of a stone cottage off the gas grid and a landlord letting out a flat each face their own rules, their own constraints and their own routes to funding. The Energy Performance Certificate is the common starting point: it rates your property from A to G, with G the least energy efficient, and it is the document that landlords, buyers and grant schemes all look at¹.

The headline patterns are stark. Around two-thirds of council and housing association houses in England and Wales carry the highest EPC ratings, A to C, compared with around 40% of houses in other tenures³. A home rated EPC C or above is generally regarded as having an adequate level of energy efficiency⁴. Where a home sits relative to that line shapes what its household can do, what it must do, and what help it can claim.

Your EPC as a starting point: what it reveals about your property

An Energy Performance Certificate provides an assessment of your home's energy efficiency¹. It rates the property from A to G, with G the least energy efficient², and it is the single document that connects almost everything on this page: whether a landlord can lawfully let a property, whether a household qualifies for certain grants, and what a buyer learns about a home before they commit to it.

The certificate matters differently depending on who you are. For a tenant, it is often the only independent information available about how expensive the home will be to heat before moving in. For an owner, it is the baseline against which any improvement, insulation, a heat pump, solar panels, can be measured. For a landlord, it is a legal threshold rather than a curiosity, because a rating below band E currently bars a property from being let in England and Wales⁶.

The tenure gap is one of the most important facts in UK home energy. Around two-thirds of council or housing association houses have EPC ratings A to C, compared with around 40% of houses in other tenure types³. Social landlords have been under specific improvement obligations for years, and the stock shows it. Private sector homes, older, more varied and more often solid-walled, lag behind, which is why so much of the funding described later in this page is aimed at private households rather than at the social sector.

A home rated EPC C or above is generally regarded as having an adequate level of energy efficiency⁴. That benchmark recurs across schemes and local authority programmes, so it is worth knowing where your own home stands. If you rent, your landlord's duties and your own options are set out in detail on renting and home energy; if you let property out, the rules that bind you are covered under landlord duties on energy, heating and home safety.

What is included in an EPC, and what is missing

A domestic EPC assessment records specific information about the property: the dwelling type, floor area, construction type, insulation, heating, ventilation and lighting⁹. From those observations an assessor produces the rating and a list of recommended improvements. It is a desk-and-visit exercise, not an invasive survey: the assessor looks at what is visible and recorded, not inside walls or under floors.

Not every property has one. Around a third of domestic properties in England and Wales do not have an EPC rating at all³, usually because they have not been sold or let since certificates became a requirement. Older homes that have been in the same family for decades are over-represented in that group, which means the national picture of home energy efficiency is built on the homes that change hands, not the whole stock.

There are also formal exemptions. EPCs are not required for protected buildings, places of worship, temporary buildings of two years or less, low energy demand industrial and agricultural buildings, seasonal residential buildings, stand-alone buildings under 50 square metres, and buildings suitable for demolition¹⁰. On the letting side, the requirement attaches to each self-contained dwelling, including HMO-licensed properties let under a joint tenancy agreement, while shared and complex accommodation is treated differently¹¹.

In Northern Ireland, the certificate works on the same principle, and census-based statistics classify households there by EPC band alongside household characteristics¹². Across all four nations, an EPC is valid for 10 years and can be used multiple times during that period; it should be made available to buyers or prospective tenants at no cost, and a buyer receives a copy from the seller that can be reused within its period of validity⁵.

Understanding the bands: from A to G and the factors behind your score

EPCs rate how energy efficient a building is, with ratings from band A (very efficient) to band G (inefficient)¹³. The rating for a home is produced by the Standard Assessment Procedure, which assigns one of seven bands to a dwelling from A (most energy efficient) to G (least energy efficient)¹³. Buildings are rated on a scale from A to G, with A the most efficient and G the least efficient, across the UK's EPC regimes⁹.

What drives the score is mostly fabric and heating. The assessment records construction type, insulation and heating system⁹, and these dominate the outcome. The Scottish House Condition Survey 2024 shows the pattern clearly: dwellings in the lowest energy efficiency bands, F and G, are more likely to be older pre-1919 dwellings (9%), non-gas heated homes, including electric (12%) and oil (9%), detached homes (5%), off-gas-grid homes (14%) and rural homes (10%)¹⁴. In other words, the worst-rated homes are concentrated in exactly the groups this page is about: old, rural and off-grid.

Dwelling type matters too. The mean Environmental Impact Rating is 62.4 points for houses and 69.4 for flats, with 35% of houses and 61% of flats in the highest bands¹⁴. Flats benefit from having fewer exposed external surfaces and from being heated on fewer sides. Bungalows fare worse than houses generally: around a third of EPC rated bungalows have ratings A to C, compared with almost half for all other types of houses³, because a bungalow puts the same roof and floor losses against a smaller floor area.

The rating system itself is changing. The Climate Change Committee has recommended that domestic EPCs should include four primary metrics, using real-world units and clear simple names: total energy use intensity, space heating demand intensity, heating system type, and energy cost intensity¹⁵. Scotland's reforms point the same way, with new ratings to include a Heat Retention Rating showing how well-insulated the home is, on an A to G scale, alongside a Heating System Type Rating and an Energy Cost Rating¹⁶, and a new Home Energy Model replacing the old calculation for domestic buildings¹⁷. For households, the practical message is that a single letter is a blunt instrument: two homes with the same band can have very different heating systems and costs.

Air source heat pumps explained: operation and suitable homes

An air source heat pump of the air-to-water type transfers heat drawn from the surrounding air to water in a wet central heating system¹⁸. It does the same job as a boiler, heating radiators or underfloor pipes and, with the right setup, domestic hot water, but it moves heat rather than generating it by burning fuel. That is the whole of the trick, and it is why a heat pump can deliver more heat energy than the electricity it consumes.

There are three types of domestic heat pump where permitted development rights apply: air source, ground source and water source¹⁹. Ground source heat pumps transfer energy from the natural heat stored in the earth to heat the home and domestic hot water²⁰. They need space for ground loops or a borehole, which makes them realistic for houses with gardens and difficult for flats, but they are steadier in cold weather because ground temperatures barely move.

What a heat pump suits is a home that is reasonably airtight and insulated first. Because the water it circulates is cooler than boiler water, the heat it delivers has to be retained by the fabric rather than blasted in. Older homes are not excluded, and the solid wall insulation sections below are the usual companion work, but the order matters: insulation first, then the heat pump sized to the improved home. Households weighing a heat pump against other electric options can read more on electric boiler vs heat pump for flats, and those with unusual walls can check whether a heat pump can replace a boiler in their home.

One point of scheme detail worth knowing: an air-to-air heat pump, which blows warm air rather than heating water, is not considered to be a renewable system in ECO4¹⁸. Grant rules distinguish between the two types, so a household chasing funding needs to be clear which kind an installer is proposing.

Planning permission for heat pumps: dimensions, placement and sound rules

Most heat pump installations in England do not need a planning application, because permitted development rights apply to the installation, alteration or replacement of an air source heat pump on a house or block of flats, or within its garden or grounds, including on a building within that curtilage⁸. But the rights come with conditions, and they are precise enough that a poorly sited unit can push a project into a full application.

The size limits are strict. The volume of the outdoor compressor unit, including its housing, must not exceed 1.5 cubic metres on a house, or 0.6 cubic metres on a block of flats⁸. Cornwall Council's guidance gives tighter figures for its area of 0.5 cubic metres on a house and 0.6 for a block of flats²¹, so local advice is worth checking before ordering a unit. All parts of the heat pump must be at least one metre from the property boundary, and on a flat roof all parts must be at least one metre from the external edge of that roof²².

The other conditions are a checklist:

• Only the first installation of an air source heat pump is permitted development on a house which is not detached or on a block of flats; on a detached house, the first two are permitted. Additional heat pumps at the same property require a planning application⁸.
• Installations on pitched roofs are not permitted development⁸.
• The heat pump must not be used solely for cooling purposes, and must be sited, so far as is practicable, to minimise its effect on the external appearance of the building and the amenity of the area⁸.
• Development is permitted only if the installation complies with the Microgeneration Certification Scheme Planning Standards (MCS 020) or equivalent standards²².
• Permitted development rights do not apply within the curtilage of a listed building or a site designated as a Scheduled Monument⁸.

In a conservation area, planning permission is needed if the heat pump would be on a wall or roof which fronts a highway, or nearer to any adjoining highway than any part of the building²³. Ground source heat pumps are simpler: installation within the curtilage of a house or block of flats does not require planning permission, though listed building consent may be required if the property is listed²³. Households in protected or unusual homes can read more on permitted development and planning by home type.

What heat pumps cost to install and to run

Published, comparable prices for heat pump installations are hard to pin down, because so much depends on the property, the emitters and the hot water arrangement. For this page, treat installation prices as installer-quoted: no reliable single figure exists in the material behind this guide, and any quote should follow a proper survey of the individual home.

Scottish modelling of new homes adds useful context on costs and performance. The air source heat pump was shown to consistently result in the lowest dwelling demand for energy across the archetypes modelled, meaning the lowest energy need once the fabric is accounted for²⁴. On capital cost, the air source heat pump had the lowest upfront cost for the houses modelled, but that relationship reversed for the block of flats, where the air source heat pump was the highest of the business-as-usual specifications²⁴. Flats, in other words, can face a different cost picture from houses for the same technology.

Because running costs depend on how well the system is designed and commissioned, the difference between a well and a badly installed heat pump shows up in bills every year. Correct sizing for the actual home, rather than a generic template, is the single thing a household can most influence at the quoting stage.

For a household thinking about independence, the honest summary is this: a heat pump removes the dependence on gas, oil or LPG deliveries, but it deepens the dependence on electricity and on the supplier that sells it. A home with a heat pump and no other generation buys every unit it uses. Pairing a heat pump with solar panels changes that arithmetic, and households considering the combination can read whether solar panels can power a heat pump.

Why solid wall insulation suits homes built before 1930

Homes built before about 1930, and most stone buildings of any age, have solid walls: a single thickness of brick or stone with no cavity to fill. Cavity wall insulation, the cheap and common upgrade, is simply not available to them. Solid walls lose even more heat than cavity walls²⁵, so the pre-1930 stock carries a double penalty: it cannot take the standard treatment, and it needs the treatment more.

The options are two. If you have solid walls you can have a decorative, weatherproof insulating treatment on the outside of your walls, or you can add ready made insulation boards internally²⁶. External insulation wraps the building in a continuous layer and finishes with render or cladding; internal insulation lines the inside face of the walls with insulated boards, losing a little floor space in every treated room.

Solid wall insulation does more than cut heating demand. It helps create a more even temperature in your home, helps prevent condensation on the walls and ceilings, and can also reduce the amount of heat building up inside your home during summer hot spells²⁵. For older homes prone to cold spots and summer overheating alike, that stability is often as valuable as the bill saving.

For traditional and historic buildings the approach needs care. Official guidance on converting traditional buildings notes that the preferred technique to insulate internally in most cases is to install vapour permeable, capillary active and hygroscopic insulation direct against a wall which has been prepared and has no residual impermeable finishes²⁷. Solid walls need to breathe; sealing them with the wrong material can trap moisture and create the very damp problems the insulation was meant to prevent. Households in listed or protected homes should also read whether solar panels can be fitted to a Georgian home for how protected status constrains energy work generally.

Prices, bill savings and guarantees for solid wall insulation

Solid wall insulation can be expensive, so the ideal time to do it is when your walls need some other corrective work²⁶. External insulation is usually installed where there are severe heating problems or the exterior of the building requires some form of other repair work providing the opportunity of adding insulation²⁵. If the render is failing or the pointing needs redoing anyway, the scaffolding is already paid for and the marginal cost of adding insulation falls sharply.

As with heat pumps, no reliable published price for solid wall insulation exists in the material behind this guide, so treat costs as installer-quoted and expect wide variation between an external and an internal approach, and between a small terraced house and a large detached one. What can be said firmly is that the two approaches differ in scale of works: external insulation is a whole-elevation job involving scaffolding and weatherproof finishing, while internal insulation can be done room by room.

The savings side is equally property-specific, because they depend on the size of the walls, the heating fuel and how warm the household keeps the home. The guarantees worth asking about are external render systems' warranties and the installer's own guarantee, and certification under the relevant industry schemes, which grant-funded work will in any case require.

Grant routes do exist for this work, and they are not means-tested in every case. In Northern Ireland, the Whole House Warmer Homes programme funds solid wall insulation, with cavity wall insulation where required, alongside loft insulation and a heating system: natural gas central heating if the property is on the gas network, oil central heating where gas is not available, or high heat retention electric storage heaters²⁸. Households in England can check the schemes described in the funding section below, and those asking the basic eligibility question can start with help for low-income households in England.

Internal versus external insulation: matching the method to the wall

The choice between internal and external solid wall insulation is a choice about the building and the household's circumstances, not just about cost.

External solid wall insulation is a decorative, weatherproof insulating treatment applied to the outside of the walls. The thickness of the insulation needs to be between 50 and 100mm²⁵. It wraps the whole building, which means continuous coverage with no thermal bridges at floor junctions, and it does not reduce room sizes. Against that, it changes the appearance of the building, which matters in conservation areas and for stone buildings whose character lies in the wall itself, and it is a major external works project.

Internal wall insulation comes in ready made insulation/plaster board laminates, or wooden battens in-filled with insulation, or flexible linings²⁵. Insulation and plaster board laminates usually consist of plasterboard backed with insulating material, typically to a total thickness of up to 90mm²⁵. Its great practical advantage is flexibility: insulation can be installed in one property, or even one room only where needed²⁷. A household can insulate the coldest north-facing bedroom one winter and the rest later, which spreads the cost and the disruption.

The trade-offs are the mirror image of external work. Internal insulation reduces floor area slightly in every treated room, makes it harder to fix heavy items to walls, and requires careful detailing around windows, floors and joist ends to avoid moisture problems. The guidance on traditional buildings is blunt about the right materials: the preferred technique in most cases is vapour permeable, capillary active and hygroscopic insulation applied direct against a prepared wall with no residual impermeable finishes²⁷. The wrong board on a breathing wall stores up damp.

For flats and leasehold properties, the choice is often made by the tenure rather than the building. External insulation is a whole-block decision requiring freeholder and management company agreement, covered in detail on leasehold consent for energy work, while internal insulation can sit within a leaseholder's or tenant's own demised premises. Shared blocks have their own route map on energy improvements in flats.

Best measures for houses, flats and homes in the countryside

The evidence consistently shows that home type sets the realistic options before any budget is discussed.

Houses have the widest choice. A house with a garden can take an air source heat pump within permitted development, a ground source system if the grounds allow, external or internal solid wall insulation, and solar on the roof. The Scottish survey figures show why houses still dominate the low-rated stock: detached homes are over-represented in bands F and G¹⁴, because they lose heat on four walls and a roof rather than sharing party walls with neighbours.

Flats perform better on paper, with a mean Environmental Impact Rating of 69.4 points against 62.4 for houses, and 61% of flats in the highest bands against 35% of houses¹⁴. But flats constrain what an individual household can do: the heat pump size limit for a block of flats is 0.6 cubic metres rather than 1.5⁸, external insulation is a communal decision, and the roof usually belongs to the freeholder. Leaseholders and tenants can read energy independence when you rent or live in a flat.

Rural and off-grid homes are the hardest cases. Off-gas-grid homes make up 14% of band F and G dwellings and rural areas 10%¹⁴, heated often by oil, LPG, coal or electricity, all of which cost more than mains gas. The funding schemes described below accept all primary heating fuel types, including gas boilers, oil, LPG, coal, solid fuels and electricity²⁹, which matters because some older schemes excluded the fuels rural homes actually use. Rural households have a dedicated page on energy in rural homes and on living off the gas grid.

Bungalows and park homes sit at the sharp end. Around a third of EPC rated bungalows have ratings A to C, compared with almost half for all other types of houses³, because their exposed roof and floor area is large for their size. Park homes, which are excluded from much standard retrofit advice, are explicitly within the scope of the main new grant scheme²⁹, and have their own page on park homes and static caravans.

UK manufacturers and their product lines

The UK heat pump market is served by a range of manufacturers, most of them branches of large international heating groups, alongside domestic installers who fit and commission the equipment. One maker's own guidance illustrates the product category at the premium end: Hitachi describes its high temperature heat pumps, which are designed to deliver the hotter water that older radiator systems need, meaning a household can sometimes keep existing radiators rather than replacing them.

The same maker's guidance notes that most high-temperature heat pumps on the market utilise refrigerants like R290 or R32³⁰. R290 is propane, a natural refrigerant with strong cold-weather performance; R32 is a newer synthetic refrigerant. This is a maker's description of its own market segment, so treat it as such, but the refrigerant point is worth knowing because it affects how a unit performs in a British winter and how it must be handled at end of life.

On incentives, the maker states that in the UK, incentives and government grants may be available for installing energy-efficient systems like high temperature heat pumps³⁰. That is accurate but general: the grant schemes listed in the next section are the authoritative picture, and eligibility depends on the household and the property, not on the brand. When comparing products, the questions that matter are the flow temperature the unit can sustain, its sound output, and whether the installer is certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, which permitted development requires in any case²².

Ways to pay: grants, loans and assistance schemes

Funding for home energy work in the UK is a patchwork by nation, tenure and income, and the patchwork has been reorganised recently, so it is worth checking what applies to your home rather than relying on older advice.

The Warm Homes: Local Grant is the flagship scheme for England, delivered through local authorities. Eligible applicants receive upgrades such as insulation, energy-efficient heating systems, and renewable energy installations²⁹. The eligible measures are broad: insulation types, heating controls, hot water cylinder measures, low energy lighting, solar PV, solar thermal, smart controls, draughtproofing, double and triple glazing, energy-efficient doors and domestic batteries²⁹. All primary heating fuel types are eligible, including gas boilers, oil, LPG, coal, solid fuels and electricity²⁹. Supported home types include houses, flats, park homes and houses in multiple occupation with separate kitchens³¹. Applicants need an EPC of D to G, or the equivalent for a park home³¹.

In London, the Warmer Homes programme sits alongside the national scheme, with the same supported home types³¹. In Northern Ireland, the Whole House Warmer Homes programme funds solid wall and loft insulation alongside heating systems, gas, oil or high heat retention storage heaters²⁸, and the NISEP list of schemes sets out the energy efficiency programmes operating there for 2026-27²⁸. Scotland and Wales run their own frameworks, covered on Warmer Homes Scotland and Nest and the Warm Homes Programme in Wales.

Local advice services knit the schemes together. East Herts Council, for example, runs a Home Energy Support Service offering information on grants and eligibility checking, benefits support, supplier switching advice, energy saving advice, debt advice and referral to other organisations or contractors³². Many councils offer something similar, and a referral through such a service is often the fastest route into the grant schemes above. Households on low incomes can start from help for low-income households in England or help for low-income households in Northern Ireland, and landlords can check funding energy upgrades as a landlord.

Upcoming regulation changes for homeowners and landlords

The legal floor for rented homes is rising, and the direction of travel is clear. In England and Wales, the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) Regulations 2015 set a minimum standard of energy efficiency: a rating of E or above for domestic private rented property⁶. Private, local authority and other public body landlords are all covered, as well as a tenant who sub-lets a property within scope⁶. Properties let with an EPC rating of F or G must be improved to a minimum of E, or an exemption registered³³.

The current band E requirement dates from April 2018, when private rented properties had to be brought up to that minimum³⁴. It sits on an older right: from April 2016, landlords of residential properties in England could not unreasonably refuse requests from their tenants for consent to make energy efficiency improvements, where financial support was available³⁴. Tenants therefore have two levers, the right to ask for improvements and the landlord's duty to meet the letting standard, and the practical steps are set out on asking a landlord for energy improvements.

The next stage has been consulted on. The government's consultation on improving the energy performance of privately rented homes, last updated 21 January 2026, proposes a single compliance date of 1 October 2030 for the new standard, alongside increasing the number of exemptions available and amending current exemptions⁷. Short-term lets are not being brought into scope yet, with more engagement required before any further consideration⁷. Landlords should treat 1 October 2030 as the planning date for any upgrade programme, because works of this scale, insulation, heating replacement, glazing, take time to schedule and fund.

For owners, the change that matters most is the reform of the EPC itself. The four-metric future recommended by the Climate Change Committee¹⁵, and the Heat Retention Rating and Heating System Type Rating planned for Scotland¹⁶, will make certificates more informative but also more demanding: a home that coasts on an old rating will find the new metrics expose its fabric and its heating system separately. Owners planning work now should aim for the fabric first, because good insulation improves every metric at once, whatever shape the certificate takes by the end of the decade.