Yes — and earlier than most people expect. The requirement is not that you have an EPC by completion. It is that you have commissioned one before the property goes on the market.

The legal position, plainly

A valid Energy Performance Certificate must be commissioned before a home is marketed for sale, and the rating has to appear in the listing. In practice, agents will not publish without it, because the duty sits with whoever is marketing the property.

The certificate lasts ten years from lodgement. If your property already has one within that window, you can generally use it — even if you have since changed the boiler or the windows. You are not obliged to update it.

When you might want a new one anyway

If you have genuinely improved the property since the last assessment, the old certificate is now working against you. A buyer looking at a D when the house is realistically a C is being shown a worse home than the one you are selling, and running costs on the certificate feed straight into mortgage affordability conversations.

Two common cases where a fresh certificate pays for itself: you have insulated the loft properly, or you have replaced an old boiler with a modern condensing one and added controls. Both move the rating in ways the calculation is sensitive to.

What your solicitor and the buyer's lender will want

  • The certificate itself, which they will usually pull from the register rather than ask you for.
  • The RRN (report reference number) if anything needs matching up.
  • For a listed building, evidence of the position — see below.

Listed buildings and the exemption people get wrong

The exemption for listed buildings is not automatic. It applies where compliance with minimum energy performance requirements would unacceptably alter the building's character or appearance. Plenty of listed homes still end up with a certificate, and conveyancers increasingly want the position evidenced rather than asserted. If your property is listed, establish this early rather than in the week of exchange.

The timing mistake that causes delays

Leaving it until the buyer's solicitor asks. By then you are inside a chain, the assessor has to fit you in, and a certificate takes a visit plus lodgement. Commissioning it alongside your agent's photography costs you nothing extra and removes the item from the critical path entirely.

If you are getting ready to market, book online and we will usually have the certificate lodged within 48 hours of the visit.