Who should I contact about an Energy Performance Certificate problem?

Scotland runs a separate enquiries line. The Scottish Government publishes EPCenquiries@gov.scot as the contact address on its Energy Performance Certificates guide and on the pages covering buildings for sale and buildings for let³. Building Standards matters, including procedural questions about warrants, sit with a different address, buildingstandards@gov.scot⁶.

The distinction that catches most households is between the assessor, the certification body and the enforcing authority. Each handles a different kind of problem, and approaching the wrong one simply adds a step.

Who to contact depends on where in the UK the property is

The UK has no single EPC regulator. England, Wales and Northern Ireland share one production rule: certificates can only be produced by accredited Domestic Energy Assessors⁹. Scotland has its own regime, its own register arrangements and its own enquiries address, and the Scottish Ministers are appointed as Keeper of the EPC Register under the 2025 regulations¹⁰.

That split matters because the first contact point differs. In Scotland, a general EPC question goes to the Scottish Government enquiries address rather than to a council or a certification body³. In Northern Ireland, district councils are the enforcing authority, and they are also the contact for advice on EPCs or where an EPC has not been made available to a buyer or new tenant². In England and Wales, there is no equivalent council advice line for EPC content; the assessor and their certification body carry the complaint route¹.

For a household, the practical effect is that the same complaint can take a different path depending on a postcode. A wrong floor area in a Glasgow flat and a wrong floor area in a Belfast terrace do not start in the same place.

Scotland: the assessor first, then the scheme, then Building Standards

Scotland's published escalation is explicit. The first step is to speak directly to your assessor. If you are still unhappy after this, you contact their certification body¹. The certification body is the organisation that accredited the assessor, and it is the body with the power to act on the assessor's conduct or competence.

Building Standards is a separate system and should not be confused with the EPC complaint route. The Scottish Building Standards Procedural Handbook publishes buildingstandards@gov.scot as its contact address⁶, and the Building Standards system is managed by the Scottish Government in partnership with all Scottish local authorities⁷. Building Standards deals with warrants, compliance and construction, not with the content of a lodged EPC.

Where the two overlap is electrical work carried out under a building warrant. Under the Scottish system, that work must be approved by a registered installer acting as an approved certifier, or checked by the local authority². A household dealing with a certificate problem that stems from notified installation work may therefore find itself in both systems at once, and the two addresses are different.

Scotland: EPC enquiries by email

The Scottish Government's EPC enquiries address is EPCenquiries@gov.scot³. It is published consistently across the EPC guide, the buildings for sale page and the buildings for let page, and it has been stable across several years of publication³. That consistency is useful: a household searching for the right address will find the same one on each page.

What the address is for is general EPC enquiries in Scotland. It is not the route for challenging an assessor's competence, which goes to the certification body¹, and it is not the route for building warrant matters, which go to buildingstandards@gov.scot⁶. Using it for the wrong purpose adds a forwarding step rather than resolving anything.

Scotland's register arrangements are also changing. The 2025 regulations appoint the Scottish Ministers as Keeper of the EPC Register¹⁰, which consolidates the register function in government rather than in a separate body. For a household, that means the Scottish Government is both the policy owner and, going forward, the keeper of the register that holds the certificate.

Northern Ireland: your district council building control

In Northern Ireland, district councils are the enforcing authority for EPCs². The published advice is direct: for advice on EPCs, or if an EPC has not been made available to you as a buyer or new tenant, contact your local district council building control². That single route covers both the question and the enforcement case.

The consequence of not having an EPC is set out plainly. Not having an EPC could lead to enforcement action and the issuing of a penalty charge notice². In Scotland, the equivalent figure published for failure to provide EPC information is a penalty charge notice of £500 or more⁵. The two nations publish different figures, and the Northern Ireland guidance does not state an amount.

Building control in Northern Ireland also handles applications directly. If a Building Control Application form is needed, the route is to contact your local council's Building Control Office¹². That is a separate function from EPC enforcement, but it runs through the same office, which is why building control is the practical first call for a Northern Ireland property.

What to do if the certificate itself is wrong

A wrong certificate is a correction problem, not an enforcement problem. The published position is that if there is a mistake, the assessor should correct it and issue a new EPC at no extra cost⁸. That is the cleanest outcome available, and it is why the assessor is the first contact rather than the certification body.

Accuracy is a known weakness in the system rather than an isolated failing. Official research commissioned on EPC accuracy set out to identify weaknesses in current EPC assumptions and processes, including defaults and assessor practices¹³. That finding matters for expectations: some inaccuracy arises from the conventions and default values the methodology requires, not only from an individual assessor's error, and a correction may not change the rating even where a detail is wrong.

Where the certificate has not been produced at all, the timing rules matter. An EPC cannot be obtained online because an assessor must visit the property to make their judgement⁹. Under the regulations, where a person is unable despite using all reasonable efforts to obtain a certificate within the seven day period, the certificate must be obtained before the end of the period of 21 days immediately following that seven day period¹⁴. Those are the deadlines that apply to the duty to obtain a certificate, and they explain why a missing EPC is treated as a compliance matter rather than a paperwork delay.

For a household, the sequence is: assessor for a correction, certification body for a conduct complaint, and the enforcing authority where no certificate exists. Related routes are set out in how to challenge a wrong EPC and how to read an Energy Performance Certificate.