Thread by @owenboswarva

How successful has DLUHC @luhc been in matching domestic Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs)? #energyefficiency #opendata #proptech

● data epc.opendatacommunities.org
● info news.opendatacommunities.org/energy-perform… + ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/…

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DLUHC has recently released bulk data for EPCs lodged to the end of 2021. That dataset contains 22,243,396 EPCs.

UPRNs have been allocated to 20,551,337 records (92%).

Of those records, 8% of UPRNs were allocated by energy assessors and 92% by matching to OS AddressBase.

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How many properties are there on the EPC register? Nobody knows.

EPCs are only required when a property is built, sold or rented, and are valid for ten years. A property may have multiple EPCs. There is no mechanism for updating the register when a property is demolished.

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25% of the 15,678,307 unique UPRNs are allocated to more than one EPC record.

That's useful because it enables us to track changes to a property over time.

However, sometimes it also enables us to detect errors in the allocation of UPRNs.

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https://twitter.com/owenboswarva/status/1505294921556795402

I said 92% of EPCs have been matched to UPRNs. But that's an average over all records lodged on the register from October 2008 to December 2021.

In some recent quarters, UPRNs have been allocated to as few as 85% of EPC records.

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There are several common reasons why a UPRN might not have been allocated to an EPC record:

● the property no longer exists,
● the lodged address was incomplete or in a non-standard format, or
● the UPRN exists but is not yet in OS AddressBase.

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It's unclear which releases of OS AddressBase DHULC has used for address-matching of EPCs. However, it appears the low rates of matching for EPCs lodged in 2021 are mainly due to the lag between creation of UPRNs for new dwellings and their availability in AddressBase.

7/9

DHULC has said it will continue address-matching of EPCs to UPRNs.

However, I note only 45 of the 1,635,380 EPC records that were unmatched in the Q3 2021 release were matched to UPRNs in the Q4 2021 release. Apparently, DHULC has not backfilled UPRNs for existing records.

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Back in 2008, when the EPC registers were created, it was cheaper for DCLG to commission its own knock-off UPRNs.

DHULC's allocation of UPRNs by address-matching is necessary and welcome progress towards maximising the re-usability of (most of) the EPC dataset as #opendata.

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