Sustainability and building compliance expert. Specialising in low energy design, SAP, SBEM, BREEAM, and air testing for the construction industry,
Andrew Sadler
The Energy Performance of Buildings Register has recently announced that they are moving all services in-house. So, what does this mean for you?
We’re a fickle world, aren’t we? New trends, big changes… it’s all part and parcel of developing and adapting, right?
It’s something we work hard to keep on top of, here at Buildpass. The energy industry is one that has the potential to transform overnight, and so it’s important to us that we have a tight grasp of all the comings and goings of the sector.
One of the recent changes to land on our doorstep, comes from the Energy Performance of Buildings Register.
What is the Energy Performance of Buildings Register?
Whenever an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is produced for a building, it pulls out a huge deal of valuable data. This data will then be collected by the energy assessor and stored in the Energy Performance of Buildings Register (EPC Register).
The data will steer research and decisions on how to improve the energy performance of the UK’s building stock, with a set regularly published by the department on Open Data Communities.
Essentially, it offers a wealth of information and opportunity. It’s a vital cog in the *more sustainable energy* machine.
Previously, the EPC Register has operated and outsourced under four different services.
These services are:
- England & Wales Domestic Register
- England & Wales Non-Domestic Register
- Northern Ireland Domestic Register
- Northern Ireland Non-Domestic Register
This means that The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has thus far re-procured all these services as outsourced contracts. Each digital service has been both run and recorded separately.
The EPC Register is now bringing all four registers into a single register for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
While Scotland still has its own register, the ownership of the register service for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will now sit entirely in-house.
It’s the first time the MHCLG has brought the management of a digital service back in-house and redeveloped it from scratch. The new approach has been developed through a selection of beta phases towards the end of 2019, with the hope that what has come out is a robust, more effective method of data collection and registration.
The changes signal the start of a new, more digitally driven journey for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
It’s part of a new set of user-needs driven principles formulated through the Digital Service Standard. The ultimate aim is to create and run exceptional public services, and this falls neatly into that category.
As the new register develops, there are also plans to link the data with Ordnance Survey’s unique property reference numbers (UPRNs) so that data users can better link energy performance data with other datasets about buildings.
It’s an interesting move in the MHCLG journey; one that we are intrigued to hear more about!
