Renting and Home Energy: What Tenants Can and Cannot Change

Renting a home limits what you can do to it, but it does not leave you with no options and no protections. Every home advertised for rent must have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), a document that rates the property's energy efficiency on a scale from A, the most efficient, to G, the least efficient¹. In England and Wales, a landlord may not lawfully grant a tenancy on a property rated F or G unless a valid exemption is registered, and may not continue letting one that is already let². Proposals now on the table would push the minimum much higher, to the equivalent of EPC C, with a single compliance date of 1 October 2030 in England and Wales³.

For a tenant, the practical questions are three: what the certificate tells you before you commit, what you can change yourself without touching the fabric of the building, and what only the landlord can do. The answers differ between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and this page sets out where they differ. What does not change is the underlying position: a rented home's insulation, heating system and glazing are the landlord's to control, and a tenant's energy independence runs through the landlord's obligations, the right to request improvements, and the schemes that fund work at no cost to either party.

What to check on the certificate before a viewing

An EPC is a document recording the estimated energy performance of a building and its main heating system, and it is a legal requirement whenever a home is advertised for sale or let⁴. The obligation reaches back a long way: any property let, rented, sold or bought since Autumn 2008 will have come with one⁵. In Scotland, a certificate is required when a new building is constructed and when a building is sold or rented to a new tenant⁴.

The important point for a prospective tenant is timing. When you first ask about a property that is for sale or rent, the owner or estate agent must show you its Energy Performance Certificate⁶. You do not have to wait until signing, or even until a viewing: the certificate should be available at the point of first enquiry. EPCs must also be provided when a building is advertised for sale or for let to a new tenant⁷, so the rating should appear with the advert itself.

What the document gives you is an assessment of the home's energy efficiency¹, produced to a standard method rather than the landlord's or agent's opinion. That makes it one of the few pieces of independent information available before you commit to a tenancy. It will not tell you what your bills will be, because it models the property to standardised assumptions rather than your household's behaviour, but it will tell you how the building compares with others, and whether the landlord is meeting the legal minimum.

How the A to G rating works and what scores well

The certificate rates energy performance on a sliding scale from A, described as very efficient, to G, the least efficient¹. Behind the letters sit numbers: both the energy efficiency and environmental impact ratings are scored on a scale of 1 to 100 and split into bands A to G⁸. The assessments are banded from A to G, where A is the most efficient in terms of lighting, heating and hot water⁹, and for dwellings the scale runs A to G, with A+ reserved for non-domestic buildings¹⁰.

In Scotland the bands are the same, A the most efficient and G the least, and energy efficiency is defined using the EPC Energy Efficiency Rating Band A to Band G based on the 2012 Standard Assessment Procedure methodology¹². So a band means the same thing in principle wherever you rent in the UK, though the assessment conventions behind it have their own history.

What counts as good is partly a matter of law and partly of comparison:

For a tenant comparing two adverts, the gap between a D and a B is not cosmetic; it reflects real differences in insulation and heating that show up in bills.

Rental energy standards: E today, C in the plans

The minimum standard of energy efficiency for certain domestic rented property in England and Wales is a rating of E or above². If a property's rating is F or G, it must be improved to at least an E before it can be rented out¹³. The prohibition has two arms: landlords may not grant a tenancy to new or existing tenants if the property is rated F or G, and they must not continue letting a property already let on that rating, unless an exemption applies². The restriction took effect from 1 April 2018, when privately rented property below the minimum standard based on the EPC rating could no longer be let¹⁴. In Wales, the same position is stated for landlords currently letting an F or G rated property: action must be taken¹⁵.

The standard is set to rise, and the timetable differs by nation:

For a tenant today in England and Wales, the operative figure is band E. A home at E is legal; a home at F or G is not, unless an exemption is registered. The C standard remains a proposal in both nations, and dates have shifted before, so a tenant should treat it as direction of travel rather than a right they can enforce yet.

Making sense of the recommendations report

Alongside the rating, a domestic EPC carries a recommendations report: information on measures that could improve the property's energy efficiency, with an indication of cost and typical savings for each improvement over three years²⁰. This is the part of the certificate a tenant can act on most directly, because it converts the single letter grade into a list of specific works, each with an indication of what it would cost and save.

The report is worth reading before you sign, not after. It tells you what the assessor saw: whether the loft is insulated, whether the walls are solid or cavity, what the heating system is and what could replace it. If the list is long and the savings are large, the property is currently costing more to run than it needs to, and you can expect that to show in your bills. If the list is short, the home is probably already near the limit of what cheap measures can fix.

The report also gives you a common language with the landlord. A request for "energy efficiency improvements" is abstract; a request citing the specific measures on the certificate, with their modelled costs and savings, is concrete. The regulations behind the tenant's right to request improvements grew out of stakeholder work on the Energy Act 2011, intended to empower private domestic tenants to request consent for energy efficiency measures that may not unreasonably be refused by their landlord²¹. The recommendations report is the evidence base for that conversation.

Improvements a tenant may make without permission

The starting rule is a restrictive one: tenants should speak to their landlord first and should not make changes without the landlord's consent²². Improvements to a rented property, even ones that seem obviously beneficial, are changes to someone else's asset, and the tenancy agreement will almost always require consent for alterations. There is no category of energy work that the law carves out for tenants to do unilaterally.

What a tenant can do without consent is therefore the things that are not fixtures: how the home is used rather than what is built into it. Draught-proofing a removable letterbox flap, using heavy curtains, rearranging furniture away from radiators, and changing how the heating is timed are all matters of occupation rather than alteration. The line is consent for changes to the property, and anything fixed, screwed, glued or plumbed in crosses it.

The law does, however, push landlords to say yes to funded work. Landlords must not unreasonably refuse tenant requests for energy efficiency improvements where the improvements can be funded at no cost to the landlord, for example through grants or third-party funding². That is the practical opening for a tenant: the request is strongest when it comes with a funding route attached. The tenant permission process is covered in detail elsewhere on this site.

Your right to ask, and its limits

Since 1 April 2016, private domestic tenants have had a right to request consent for energy efficiency improvements, and that consent may not be unreasonably refused¹⁴. The right was designed to sit alongside the minimum standard: the regulations empower tenants to ask, and the standard obliges landlords to act on the worst-rated properties. The 2015 order also extended the benefit of the regulations to tenants living in the majority of domestic agricultural properties¹⁴.

The right has limits, and they matter. Landlords are not required by these regulations to carry out improvement works²²; the duty to improve bites only where the property falls below band E and no exemption applies. A landlord's protection in the domestic sector is that they will not be required to reach an E rating by installing measures which are not cost effective, provided all improvements fundable through the Green Deal, the Energy Company Obligation and any available grant funding have been carried out¹⁴. In other words, the right to request is strongest where funding exists and weakest where the tenant expects the landlord to spend their own money.

Consent from others can also stop work. An exemption applies where consent for a relevant energy efficiency measure was required and sought, and was refused, or was granted subject to a condition the landlord was not reasonably able to comply with²⁴. In flats and leasehold properties this is a live issue, and the freeholder consent route is dealt with separately.

A tenant's request is most likely to succeed when it follows a clear sequence:

1. Read the EPC's recommendations report and note the specific measures listed, with their modelled costs and savings²⁰.
2. Identify a funding route that costs the landlord nothing, such as a grant or supplier obligation scheme².
3. Make the request in writing, citing the measures and the funding.
4. Expect consent: a landlord must not unreasonably refuse a request for improvements funded at no cost to them².

For a tenant, the practical reading is this: a request tied to grant funding, citing the certificate's recommendations, is hard for a landlord to refuse lawfully. A request for the landlord to self-fund major works rests on persuasion, not compulsion.

Landlord-only works: insulation, heating and major upgrades

The measures that move a home's rating most, such as wall and loft insulation, a new boiler or a heat pump, and window replacement, are fixtures, and only the landlord can authorise them. The regulations recognise this by defining what counts as a "relevant energy efficiency improvement" through funding: a recommended measure qualifies where third-party funding covers the full cost, or the cost is £3,500 or less inclusive of VAT, or a combination of landlord self-funding and third-party funding totals £3,500 or less inclusive of VAT². Above that line, the landlord cannot be compelled to install it under the current standard.

In Scotland, the direction of policy links efficiency and heating directly. Under the proposals in the Heat in Buildings Bill consultation, private rented properties would still be required to meet the minimum energy efficiency standard even if a clean heating system had already been installed²⁵, and landlords would be required to meet that standard by the end of 2028²⁵. Properties not meeting the standard by then would not be allowed to be leased to a new tenant²⁵.

Funding does exist for landlords, and a tenant's request can point to it. Scotland's Private Rented Sector Landlord Loan Scheme provides private registered landlords with interest free and low interest loan funding to improve the energy efficiency of their properties and install clean heating systems, and by October 2025 it had supported landlords to install over 350 energy efficiency and clean heating and renewable measures²⁶. For a tenant, the significance is that "the landlord cannot afford it" is not always the end of the conversation; loan and grant routes exist, and the landlord funding options are set out on their own page.

Shortcomings of the certificate as a tenant's guide

An EPC is a model of the property, not a measurement of your home as lived in. The Energy Efficiency Rating is the first rating to appear on the certificate and is the one required in adverts, showing the current and potential rating²⁰, but it is calculated to standardised assumptions about occupancy and use. Two tenants in the same rated flat can have very different bills.

The certificate can also be old. A document up to ten years old¹ reflects the property as it was assessed, and energy prices since then have moved dramatically. The delay in confirming new energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector was estimated in one study to cost private renters an additional £1bn in energy bills²⁷, a figure that indicates how much money rides on standards being settled and enforced.

Reform is coming because the limitations are recognised. The Scottish Government has announced a new EPC rating system for domestic buildings, intended to give clearer information on the fabric energy efficiency of a property, the emissions, efficiency and running costs of its heating system, and the cost of energy to run the home to standardised conditions²⁸. Until such reforms land, a tenant should read the certificate as a comparative tool, strong for comparing one property against another and weak for predicting actual bills. The gap between a rating and real performance is a known issue, and it is explored in our page on the new build performance gap.

How long it lasts, what it costs and where to get one

An EPC is valid for a maximum of ten years, or until another EPC is commissioned for the same building, whichever is sooner¹. In Scotland, a new EPC does not need to be produced when the previous certificate's ten-year validity period expires, unless the property is being sold or let to a new tenant²². So a tenancy that continues past the certificate's tenth birthday does not make the property unlawful; the certificate simply cannot be relied on as current.

On cost and who pays, the rules are clear:

• Who provides it: if a building is being rented, it is the responsibility of the landlord to provide the EPC to the potential tenant¹.
• Scotland: the EPC must be provided to a new tenant free of charge²², and the owner must make a valid certificate and the related property report available free of charge to prospective tenants, with copies provided free of charge on letting²⁹.
• Agencies: where a building is leased to an agency which then rents it on to its own tenants, responsibility for the EPC depends on the contract between the building owner and the agency²².
• The assessment fee: not fixed in the material here, so treat it as assessor-quoted.

To find a certificate, ask at first enquiry: the owner or agent must show it then⁶. An EPC is required for every individual dwelling that is rented out in Scotland²², and the same principle applies across the UK, so a certificate should exist for any lawful let.

Bill help and support schemes for renters

A tenant's leverage is greatest when the money for improvements comes from somewhere other than the landlord's pocket. The Energy Company Obligation, operating as ECO4, is the main obligation scheme requiring energy suppliers to fund efficiency improvements, and local authority guidance directs households to it as the primary route for funded measures³⁰. Supplier guidance on the scheme sets out how the obligations are administered¹⁰. Because landlords must not unreasonably refuse tenant requests for improvements funded at no cost to the landlord², a scheme-funded proposal is the strongest request a tenant can make.

In Scotland, the Private Rented Sector Landlord Loan Scheme gives landlords interest free and low interest loans for efficiency and clean heating measures, with over 350 such measures supported by the scheme by October 2025²⁶. A tenant cannot apply on the landlord's behalf, but knowing the scheme exists turns a vague request into a specific one.

Two things limit what a renter can reach. Most grant schemes are aimed at the owner or registered landlord, so the tenant's role is to prompt and to consent, not to contract. And the household's own bill support, such as schemes for low income households in England, Warmer Homes Scotland, Nest in Wales and help in Northern Ireland, is separate from property improvements and depends on the household's circumstances rather than the landlord's cooperation.

Why some cold rentals remain within the law

The minimum standard has teeth, but it also has a register of exemptions, and a property can sit at F or G lawfully if one is registered. The categories include²:

• properties that are listed or officially protected where the requirements would unacceptably alter them
• temporary buildings used two years or less
• places of worship
• buildings due for demolition with the relevant consents
• certain HMOs not sold or let as a single rental in the past ten years

Exemptions also arise from the funding rules. Where a landlord cannot improve the property within the £3,500 funding limit, or third-party or tenant consent is refused, an exemption can be registered². Exemptions expire: after six months, a landlord relying on the temporary exemption for recently becoming a landlord must either have improved the property to at least band E or registered another valid exemption if they intend to continue letting²⁴. The high cost exemption likewise expires, after which the landlord must try again to improve the property's rating, and may register a further exemption if it still cannot be achieved²⁴.

Under the proposed new standard, the framework would change: the cost cap would rise to £10,000, exemptions would carry a 10-year validity period, and the number of exemptions available would increase, with current exemptions amended³. For a tenant, the practical point is that a cold, poorly rated let is not automatically an unlawful one. Asking whether an exemption is registered, and on what ground, is a fair question, and the answer tells you whether the landlord is within the rules or outside them.

Future changes to rental properties and their certificates

The direction of travel is clear on both sides of the border. In England and Wales, the 2025 update to the consultation on privately rented homes proposes a dual-metric standard, with a fabric performance standard first, followed by landlord discretion to meet either a heating system standard or a smart readiness standard, and a single compliance date of 1 October 2030³. Properties with a current EPC C would be recognised as compliant under the future standard until the EPC expires³. The impact assessment for the amending regulations has been rated fit for purpose³¹.

In Scotland, the reformed domestic EPC's new Heat Retention Rating would be used as a basis for setting the standard⁷, and the Heat in Buildings Bill consultation proposed that private rented properties not meeting the energy efficiency standard by the end of 2028 would not be allowed to be leased to a new tenant²⁵. The new rating system announced for domestic buildings would give clearer information on fabric energy efficiency, heating system performance and the cost of energy to run the home²⁸.

For tenants, two things follow. First, the certificates themselves will change, so a rating you understand today may be expressed differently in a few years. Second, the legal floor under rented homes is set to rise, which shifts the balance of power in the request-for-improvements conversation: what is today a proposal the landlord can decline becomes, on the proposed dates, a standard the landlord must meet to let the property at all. Neither change is certain until the legislation is final, and dates in consultations have moved before, so treat them as the direction of policy rather than settled law. The wider context, including the Renters' Rights Act and energy in England, is covered in its own page.