How many homes in England have an EPC of D or below?

The official statistics office frames the same problem differently. Of the social homes it examined in England and Wales, 28% have an EPC rating of D or worse². The Energy Saving Trust puts over 15 million homes across Great Britain at an EPC rating of C or below³, and BEAMA reported more than 14.8 million UK homes at band D or below as of January 2026⁴. The UK Green Building Council describes just under two-thirds of the nation's homes as rated D or below⁵.

The spread between these numbers is not a contradiction. It reflects different geographies (England, Great Britain, the UK), different thresholds (D or below, C or below) and, most importantly, the fact that EPCs cover around 71% of the housing stock in England and around 67% in Wales⁶. Every national total is therefore modelled from a partial dataset, and the true count of poorly rated homes is an estimate.

England, the UK and social housing: how the figures differ

The headline count for England sits at nearly 13 million homes rated D or worse¹. Widen the boundary and the numbers grow: over 15 million homes across Great Britain are classed as energy inefficient at C or below³, and more than 14.8 million UK homes are rated band D or below⁴. The UK Green Building Council's "just under two-thirds" is a share rather than a count, and it is the highest of the three because it measures the proportion of the stock rather than a subset⁵.

Social housing performs better than the stock as a whole, and the gap is widening. Socially rented properties have the highest proportion of homes at band C or above, at 62.68% in England, compared with 53% of homes in England overall⁹. The social housing sector rose from 18% at C or above in 2008 to around 66%¹¹, and over half of UK social housing was already at band C or better by October 2022¹². Less than a third, 28%, of socially rented homes fall below band C, against 52% of private rented homes¹³.

The private rented sector is the weak point. In England, 55% of rented households fall below EPC C¹⁴, and 1 in 2 private rented homes sits below the government's band C target¹³. Scotland has legislated separately for its private rented sector, and its social housing standard is set through the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing rather than the English banding¹⁵.

Wales has its own profile: 63% of the Welsh housing stock was graded EPC Band D or below in 2022¹⁷. Northern Ireland is covered by separate fuel poverty strategy work rather than the England and Wales certificate statistics¹⁸.

Why so many homes fall below Band C: age of the housing stock

Age is the strongest single predictor of a poor rating. Over 80% of homes built before 1930 have an EPC rating of D or lower, and around half of those are rated band D¹⁹. The pre-1930 stock is roughly a century old, built before cavity walls, before insulation standards and before any regulation of thermal performance.

The geography follows the age of the stock. Tower Hamlets in London stands out as the local authority with the highest percentage of housing at band C or above, with 82% of dwellings holding a valid EPC score of 69 or above⁸. That is a newer, denser, flatted stock. The constituencies at the other end look very different: in Blackpool South, around 3 in 4 homes, 73%, are at EPC band D or below²⁰.

There is also a measurement problem inside the data. A study of EPCs for 1.6 million dwellings that had at least two lodged certificates suggests that as many as 24% of homes that should be rated D are rated C²¹. In other words, some of the homes counted as compliant may not be, and the true number below band C is likely to be higher than the certificates show.

The volume of assessment itself moves with policy. In the first quarter of 2023, 352,000 existing domestic EPCs were lodged in England, an 8% decrease on the same quarter a year earlier²². Certificate numbers rise when a scheme or a sale requires one, which means the dataset is shaped by the rules as much as by the housing.

Grants and schemes that use an EPC of D or below as the threshold

Band D is the dividing line for most public funding. The schemes below all use it, in slightly different ways.

ECO4 is the largest of these. If a householder owns their house, it must have an EPC rating of D, E, F or G to be eligible²³, and the household must receive one or more qualifying benefits including Child Benefit, Pension Guarantee Credit, Income-related ESA, Income-based JSA, Income Support, Universal Credit, Housing Benefit and Pension Credit Savings Credit²⁴. Homes at D or below can receive heavily discounted or free home insulation, green heating systems or an upgraded boiler²³.

The Home Upgrade Grant targeted the worst performing households, those with an EPC rating of D or lower and no mains gas central heating in England²⁵. It aimed to bring homes at F or G up to D, and homes at D or E up to C²⁵, and it supported low energy efficiency, low income households with income below £30,000 across England²⁶. Parliament's briefing on the scheme confirms it covered low income households in properties off the gas grid at bands D to G³². It has closed.

The Warm Homes: Local Grant is the current successor in England. It requires an EPC of D or below²⁷, and covers owner occupied properties at band D, E, F or G and privately rented properties at band D or E²⁸. Eligibility requires a home in England, privately owned, at EPC D to G, household savings under £25,000 and household income usually £36,000 a year or less, with postcode or benefits exceptions²⁸. The Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan factsheet describes it as providing energy performance measures and low carbon heating to low income households living in privately owned EPC band D to G homes in England².

Wales runs its own programme. The New Warm Homes Programme sets its EPC eligibility at dwellings rated E and below³⁰, a tighter threshold than England's D. Scotland's Warmer Homes Scotland scheme uses an EPC rating of D, E, F or G as its poor energy rating test¹⁸, and Scotland's private rented sector has its own minimum standards¹⁵.

What moving from D to C would take, and how many homes could get there

The cost of closing the gap is large. BEAMA put the figure at over £100 billion needed in the next 15 years to get homes in England up to EPC band C, as of 2021³³. That is a modelled estimate of the whole stock, not a per-home price, and it predates the current grant rounds.

For individual properties, the only official per-dwelling figure in the public record is older and narrower. A 2017 Scottish consultation estimated £203 million in total, or £2,140 on average, to raise dwellings with an initial EPC of E, F or G directly to EPC D¹⁵. That is a Scottish figure from 2017 and should be read as such, but it is the clearest published average for a band-to-band upgrade.

The same consultation modelled how many homes would need work at each stage. Between 26,000 and 36,000 dwellings would need upgrading in the first year of an EPC D requirement, depending on landlord behaviour¹⁵. At the backstop date, around 35,000 dwellings would still need work if F or G properties were only upgraded to E in the first stage, or 22,000 if all F or G properties were upgraded directly to D¹⁵.

What this means for a household's energy independence is straightforward. A home at band D or below is more exposed to price movements, because it needs more units of gas or electricity to reach the same internal temperature. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit found that families in poorly insulated homes could pay more on energy bills from April¹³. Insulation and glazing reduce that exposure permanently; a grant reduces the cost of getting there. Neither removes the grid connection or the supplier, and the certificate itself changes nothing about how the home performs until the measures are installed.

The scale of the task is also visible in the assessment market. EPCs cover around 71% of the housing stock in England and around 67% in Wales⁶, so roughly three in ten English homes have no certificate at all and are absent from every count on this page. For the wider dataset behind these figures, see EPC statistics and the UK home energy statistics pillar.