Assessing Energy Efficiency Compliance for Wokingham Borough Council

Situation

Wokingham Borough Council needed a partner to assist with understanding and assessing the various routes to compliance with The Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015, also known as the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES).

MEES is a set of legal requirements that aim to improve the energy efficiency of private rented properties across the UK. Under MEES, buildings in England or Wales must achieve at least an ‘E’ rating on their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in order for them to be leased or rented.

Wokingham Borough Council has an extensive portfolio of private rented property so decided to focus on a sample of its stock and utilise the results from these assessments to inform future decisions in relation to its remaining stock.

Solution

Anthesis assessed the performance and prepared EPCs for 36 of the client’s buildings, creating an asset register in the process.

A report was prepared which detailed the energy, carbon and cost savings which would be achieved from the implementation of seven potential Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs), all of which had a seven-year payback period, as required by MEES. Our experts also created simulations of the seven options, packaged eleven different ways in order to assess net present value and lifetime return on investment.

Through our assessments and simulations, we were able to present two potential routes for Wokingham Borough Council to achieve compliance with MEES. The first route achieves compliance by implementing all of the ECM recommendations on the EPCs, however, this may not necessarily result in all buildings achieving an EPC rating of E.

Should Wokingham Borough Council decide to go one step further, it can choose the second route to compliance, which involves implementing a different package of ECMs which will bring all of its buildings up to the minimum EPC rating of E.

Impact

Through this process Wokingham Borough Council were able to make an informed decision about how best to achieve compliance with MEES, weighing up the energy, cost and carbon savings as well as the return on investment from each of the two options. The Council can also use the learnings from this project to make informed decisions about the rest of its building stock.