Housing Stock and Home Energy Data for England

The English Housing Survey (EHS) is the national survey of people's housing circumstances and the condition and energy efficiency of housing in England. It is a repeated cross-sectional survey that pairs a household interview with a physical inspection of the home, and it is an Accredited Official statistic, previously known as a National statistic¹. It is one of the longest standing government surveys, first run in 1967¹.

Its energy findings are published in stages rather than as one annual report. The 2024 to 2025 headline findings on housing quality and energy efficiency were published on 29 January 2026, and the home insulation fact sheet followed on 14 May 2026¹. The 2023 to 2024 low carbon technologies fact sheet was published on 15 May 2025³. The survey applies to England, so its figures describe the English stock and not the UK as a whole².

For a household thinking about energy independence, the survey is the closest thing to a census of what English homes actually have: how they are heated, how well they are insulated, how many have a heat pump, and what it would cost to bring the worst of them up to standard. It measures the stock; it does not measure what any individual home uses, and it does not tell a household what to install.

What the English Housing Survey is and what it covers

The EHS is a national survey of people's housing circumstances and the condition and energy efficiency of housing in England¹. Its structure is what distinguishes it from a pure energy dataset: a household interview captures who lives there, tenure and household characteristics, while a physical inspection records the fabric and services of the dwelling itself. The two halves are what allow the survey to connect a household's circumstances to the building it occupies.

The energy reporting has a defined scope. The 2021 to 2022 energy report gives an overview of the energy efficiency of the English housing stock between 2011 and 2021, then explores energy efficiency in 2021 by dwelling and household characteristics⁴. It reports on the presence of different heating systems, and it focuses on the cost of improving homes that have an energy efficiency rating of band D or lower to at least band C, identifying the more common improvement measures within the English stock⁴.

Territorial extent matters here. The EHS applies to England, and the fact sheets carry that restriction explicitly². The Housing Energy Fact File, by contrast, aims to draw together the important data about energy use in homes in Great Britain, so it is wider in scope but older⁸. For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, separate housing condition and dwelling stock sources apply, and the four UK nations are covered by four separate surveys⁹.

The survey is also used beyond its own publications. The Committee on Climate Change's work on overheating risk uses data from the English Housing Survey to assess the profile of English dwellings at risk¹⁰. That reuse is a useful signal of what the survey is good for: a consistent, repeatable description of the stock that other analysts can build on.

An Accredited Official statistic, running since 1967

The EHS is an Accredited Official statistic, previously known as a National statistic, and it is one of the longest standing government surveys, first run in 1967¹. That status is not decorative. It signals that the statistics are produced to a published code of practice, and it distinguishes them from outputs that carry weaker labels.

The distinction is worth understanding because the housing and energy field mixes several statuses, as the table below sets out.

Accreditation does not mean final. The Household Energy Efficiency Statistics headline release for June 2026 states that the statistics are provisional and are subject to future revisions¹³, and the October 2022 release carried the same caveat¹⁷. The EHS itself is not immune to timing effects: the physical survey data for 2024 to 2025 was collected from March 2023 to March 2025 and weighted to a midpoint of April 2024, so a single year's release rests on a two-year fieldwork window¹.

For a household reading these numbers, the practical implication is that a figure quoted from an Accredited Official statistic is the best available description of the stock at a point in time, but it is a description of the stock, not a live reading of any one home.

How the survey works: sample sizes and who runs it

The EHS is run by the Department for Communities and Local Government, now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government⁹. The department also commissions the Building Research Establishment to analyse EHS physical survey data, including work using 2019 physical survey data to estimate whether dwellings would pass or fail an updated Decent Homes Standard and the potential cost of bringing homes up to the revised standard¹⁸.

The survey's findings are reported on a full household sample¹¹. The physical survey element runs over a longer window than the interview element: for 2024 to 2025, physical survey data was collected from March 2023 to March 2025 and weighted to a midpoint of April 2024¹. That design is deliberate, spreading inspection work across a longer period to build a usable sample of dwellings.

The EHS also feeds follow-up work. The Energy Follow-Up Survey 2011 consisted of follow-up interviews with a sub-set of households that formed part of the much larger 2010/2011 English Housing Survey¹⁹. That pattern, a large main survey with a smaller intensive follow-up, is how detailed energy use behaviour gets measured without inspecting every home in the main sample.

Sample sizes in this field vary widely by purpose, which is worth knowing when comparing surveys:

• Ofgem Consumer Survey 2021: 4,037 energy consumers in Great Britain solely or jointly responsible for their household's energy bills²⁰
• Energy Consumer Satisfaction Survey: fieldwork between 5 January and 3 February 2026, with 3,911 domestic energy consumers taking part²¹
• Scottish occupant behaviour study: a survey of 200 homes²²
• English Housing Survey: reported on a full household sample, with physical survey data collected over a two-year window¹

The EHS sits at the larger end of this range, which is what allows it to break results down by tenure and dwelling characteristic.

The English housing stock: tenure and dwelling numbers

The dwelling stock estimates for England are the companion dataset to the EHS, and they set the totals that the survey's percentages describe. The statistics use the Census as a baseline and apply annual net changes to the dwelling stock as measured by the related Housing supply: net additional dwellings statistics¹⁴. The release also includes figures on dwelling density, represented by dwellings per hectare of land area¹⁴.

Tenure breakdowns in the dwelling stock estimates draw on local authority returns, registered social landlord returns and estimates from the Annual Population Survey²³. That mix of sources is why the tenure figures carry a different character from the physical survey data: they are administrative and modelled counts rather than inspections.

The devolved picture differs, and the Welsh figures show how much uncertainty sits around tenure estimates. In Wales, owner-occupied dwellings were estimated at 1,059,300 as at 31 March 2025, with a lower confidence interval of 1,051,300 and an upper of 1,070,700; privately rented dwellings were estimated at 184,900, with a range of 175,200 to 194,600²³. For 2023 to 2024, the revised estimate of owner-occupied dwellings in Wales increased by 16,100 (2%) and the number of privately rented dwellings decreased by 16,100 (8%)²³. Revisions of that size are a reminder that tenure estimates move as methods and returns change.

Energy efficiency of the stock: what the survey measures

The EHS energy reporting is built around energy efficiency ratings and the measures that move them. The 2021 to 2022 energy report gives an overview of the energy efficiency of the English housing stock between 2011 and 2021, then explores energy efficiency in 2021 by dwelling and household characteristics⁴. It reports on the presence of different heating systems and focuses on the cost of improving homes rated band D or lower to at least band C, identifying the more common improvement measures within the English stock⁴.

The survey's energy findings sit alongside a separate but related data stream. Energy Performance Certificates cover around 60% of the housing stock in England and around 55% in Wales, based on Census 2021 analysis by the Office for National Statistics¹⁵. The same coverage figure of around 60% for England appears in earlier EPC statistical releases²⁴. EPC data is used to evaluate trends in the energy performance of buildings that have had a certificate, to assess changes between the same quarter across years, and as an early indication of new housing supply²⁴.

The two sources answer different questions:

• EPC data describes the subset of homes that have had a certificate, which skews towards homes that have been sold, let or improved, and covers around 60% of the English stock¹⁵.
• The EHS inspects a sample designed to represent the whole stock, including homes that have never had a certificate¹.

That is why the survey is the better source for statements about the stock as a whole, and why EPC coverage of around 60% is a limit on what certificate data alone can say.

New build performance is tracked separately. The energy efficiency characteristics of new dwellings statistics are consistent with the Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates statistics release, and they are published as Official Statistics in Development⁶. The Office for National Statistics also produced a five-year rolling energy efficiency of housing dataset for England and Wales, with a release date of 28 October 2025 and editions covering March 2025, March 2024, March 2023 and March 2022²⁵. That dataset was delayed by three weeks from 6 October to 28 October 2025 because of a data quality issue found during quality assurance²⁵.

One output has been withdrawn. The Office for National Statistics reviewed its outputs and decided to discontinue its Energy Efficiency of Housing statistics²⁶. Households and analysts relying on that series need to move to the five-year rolling dataset or the EHS instead.

Heat pumps: 0.8% of existing English dwellings

Heat pumps remain a small share of the existing English stock, and the survey and related sources agree on the order of magnitude. In England, 0.8% of existing dwellings have heat pumps, compared with 4.2% of new dwellings, as of March 2025⁶. Across the UK, around 1% of homes have a heat pump installed²⁷.

The gap between new and existing dwellings is the striking part of the English figures. New build is installing heat pumps at roughly five times the rate of the existing stock, but even there the share is 4.2%, so gas and other heating still dominate new construction⁶. The EHS low carbon technologies fact sheet examines the prevalence and preparedness of English homes for low carbon technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicle charge points, which is the survey's route into this question³.

The Climate Change Committee has set out how far the stock has to move. Approximately 10% of existing homes in the UK will need to be heated by a heat pump by 2030, compared with only approximately 1% today, in its assessment published on 18 July 2024²⁸. Its balanced pathway has 52% of existing homes in the UK heated using a heat pump in 2040, compared to around 1% in 2023²⁹.

Readiness is not the binding constraint, according to the same official guidance. This is despite 90% of UK homes having sufficient insulation and electrical capacity to operate a heat pump²⁷. The gap between 90% technical readiness and around 1% installation is therefore about cost, disruption, supply chain and decision making rather than physical suitability alone.

The devolved picture is thinner. In Scotland, there were 36,000 domestic properties with heat pumps, around 1.4% of all dwellings, in 2022³⁰. That is a higher share than England's existing-dwelling figure, but it is drawn from a different survey and a different year, so the two are not directly comparable.

How households keep cool: open windows for 89.7%, air conditioning for 3%

Cooling in UK homes is overwhelmingly passive. The most common method of keeping cool reported in England in 2024 was opening the windows, at 89.7% of coping methods, followed by closing shutters, curtains or blinds at 74.7%¹. A separate survey of all households found people were most likely to report simply opening windows or doors (80%), with closing curtains or blinds at 45% and air conditioning at 5%².

Air conditioning remains rare: it is estimated that 3% of UK homes currently have air conditioning, with 4% household penetration in England³. Where mechanical cooling is absent, the building fabric does the work. Insulation keeps homes cool in the summer, warm in the winter and means people use less energy because less of it is wasted through draughty windows, walls and roofs⁵.

Demand for cooling is nonetheless rising. 36% of people reported using more energy compared to previous summers to keep their home cool this summer⁶. For a household's energy independence, passive cooling costs nothing to run and depends on no supplier, while air conditioning adds a summer electrical load and a further reliance on the grid.

Cooling is measured differently from heating, and the survey and tracker data show how heavily English households rely on passive methods. In the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero public attitudes tracker for winter 2025, people were most likely to report simply opening windows or doors (80%), with 45% closing curtains or blinds and 5% saying they used air conditioning³¹.

The overheating evidence base uses the EHS itself. The Committee on Climate Change's work on the risks to housing from overheating uses data from the English Housing Survey to assess the profile of English dwellings at risk¹⁰. That is the mechanism by which the survey supports analysis of summer comfort as well as winter warmth.

The home insulation fact sheet frames the survey's interest in comfort on the cold side. It aims to provide insight into what insulation is used in English homes and the profile of households living in homes with low levels of insulation, alongside household reports of condensation and inability to keep warm². Condensation and inability to keep warm are self-reported measures, which is a different kind of evidence from the physical inspection of insulation.

For a household, the practical point is that cooling in England is overwhelmingly behavioural rather than mechanical. Opening windows and closing blinds cost nothing and depend on the building's orientation, shading and ventilation, not on a fuel supply. Air conditioning, at 5% of households, is the minority route and the one that adds an electricity load.

What it would cost to upgrade homes: £7,480 on average

The cost of improving the stock is where the survey's energy reporting becomes most concrete. In 2024, the estimated average cost to improve dwellings to at least an energy efficiency band C was £7,480 across all tenures¹. The 2021 to 2022 energy report focuses on the cost of improving homes that have an energy efficiency rating of band D or lower to at least band C, and identifies the more common improvement measures within the English stock⁴.

The regulatory backdrop for privately rented homes has been moving. The government has proposed to raise the minimum energy efficiency standard required of privately rented homes in England and Wales to the equivalent of Energy Performance Certificate C by 2030, with a single compliance date of 1 October 2030 for the new standard⁷. The same consultation set out raising the cost cap to £10,000 with a 10-year validity period for exemptions, and stated that increasing standards in the sector will support the delivery of up to 5 million home upgrades by 2030⁷. The consultation page was last updated on 21 January 2026⁷.

Grant support for landlords operates on a different scale. Under the Warm Homes: Local Grant, the cost cap is £30,000 for the first property a landlord upgrades, split as £15,000 for energy efficiency measures and £15,000 for low-carbon heating measures, and £15,000 per property for any other properties a landlord upgrades, split as £7,500 and £7,500²⁹.

The two figures that matter most to a household are therefore the average improvement cost of £7,480 across all tenures and the proposed £10,000 cost cap for privately rented homes¹. They are not the same measure: one is an estimated average across the stock, the other is a regulatory ceiling on what a landlord can be required to spend before an exemption applies.

Boiler efficiency and where the least efficient homes are

The survey's heating system data is the starting point for any assessment of where the least efficient homes are. The 2021 to 2022 energy report reports on the presence of different heating systems across the English stock⁴. That is the measure that shows how many homes still depend on a boiler rather than a heat pump or another low carbon source.

The National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework provides the impact side of the picture. Its data tables cover impact of measures analysis, which assesses the impact of installing home efficiency measures such as loft insulation on household energy consumption¹². That is a different question from the EHS's stock description: it asks what changed when a measure was installed, rather than what the stock contains.

The least efficient homes are concentrated where the cost of improvement is hardest to bear. The privately rented sector is the focus of the proposed band C standard, with the 2030 compliance date and the £10,000 cost cap⁷. The EHS 2021 to 2022 private rented sector report is the survey's dedicated output on that tenure¹¹. Owner-occupied homes, at 64.1% of the stock and 16.6 million dwellings, are the largest group by far, and they are not subject to the same regulatory driver⁵.

Primary heating fuel varies by tenure, and the Scottish data illustrates the pattern even though it is not an English figure. In Scotland, electricity was the primary heating fuel for 8% of owner occupied and 10% of social sector dwellings in 2024³⁰. That is a reminder that the split between gas and electricity as a primary heating fuel is a tenure-linked characteristic, not just a regional one.

For a household, the practical reading is that the least efficient homes are identified by their energy efficiency rating, and the survey's improvement cost work is aimed at the band D or lower portion of the stock⁴. The measures that move a home up the bands are the ones the survey identifies as more common within the English stock⁴.

Using the data: the EHS analysis tool and related datasets

The EHS is published in a form intended for reuse, not just reading. The English Housing Survey analysis tool allows users to make use of data from the English Housing Survey easily, with a special focus on energy, and the 2010 version of the tool is still available⁹. The BRE Housing Data tool provides a simple way to analyse data on housing and energy, and all the data on the Housing Data Tool is obtained from the UK data archive⁹.

The survey's outputs are released in stages:

1. The 2021 to 2022 energy report was published on 13 July 2023⁴.
2. The 2023 to 2024 low carbon technologies fact sheet was published on 15 May 2025³.
3. The 2024 to 2025 headline findings on housing quality and energy efficiency were published on 29 January 2026¹.
4. The 2024 to 2025 home insulation fact sheet was published on 14 May 2026².

Related datasets fill out the picture. The National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework is an Accredited Official statistics release covering the impact of measures analysis¹². The energy efficiency characteristics of new dwellings statistics are consistent with the Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates statistics release and are published as Official Statistics in Development⁶. The Office for National Statistics five-year rolling energy efficiency of housing dataset for England and Wales was released on 28 October 2025, with the next release scheduled for October 2026²⁵.

The dwelling stock estimates for England are published as Accredited Official statistics and use the Census as a baseline, applying annual net changes as measured by the related Housing supply: net additional dwellings statistics¹⁴. The breakdown of dwelling stock estimates by tenure uses local authority returns, registered social landlord returns and estimates from the Annual Population Survey²³.

For a household trying to understand its own position against the national picture, the survey's value is comparative. It shows what share of homes have a heat pump, what the stock's energy efficiency looks like, and what improvement costs average out at. It does not rate an individual home, and it does not replace an assessment of the building in front of you.