EPC Register MCP Server

EPC Register — Energy Performance of Buildings Data API

The MHCLG-operated public API for England and Wales covers three certificate types and exposes capabilities for searching them, fetching the full record by certificate number, decoding the numeric fields inside a certificate, sync'ing against a change-feed, and downloading the bulk datasets.

Certificate types

• Domestic EPC — residential properties.
• Non-domestic EPC — commercial and public buildings. Search rows carry a relatedRrn linking to a recommendations report.
• Display Energy Certificate (DEC) — operational ratings for public buildings.

All three search the same way: by postcode, free-text partial address, UPRN, one or more council names, one or more parliamentary constituency names, one or more efficiency bands (A–G), and/or a registration date window.

Search behaviour

• At least one filter is required: postcode, address, UPRN, councils, constituencies, efficiency bands, or a date_start/date_end window.
• date_end defaults to yesterday. The date range cannot include today.
• Pagination uses current_page (1-indexed) and page_size (max 5000, default 100). The response carries pagination.totalRecords, totalPages, nextPage, and prevPage.
• Search rows are summaries: addressLine1..4, postcode, postTown, council, constituency, currentEnergyEfficiencyBand, uprn, certificateNumber, registrationDate. Non-domestic and display rows also include relatedRrn.
• Use efficiency_ratings to filter by band(s) such as ["A","B","C"].

Single certificate

Once a certificate number is known (from a search row's certificateNumber, or a 9999-9999-9999-9999-9999-style lookup), fetch the full certificate to get the underlying SAP / RdSAP / SBEM record — fabric, heating, lighting, ventilation, address detail, and assessor information.

Decoding numeric fields in a full certificate (do not skip this)

The full certificate document is dominated by integer codes — built_form: 4, property_type: 2, main_fuel: 39, transaction_type: 6, report_type: 3, construction_age_band, tenure, etc. These are meaningless on their own.

The certificate carries a schema_type field (e.g. "SAP-Schema-18.0.0", "RdSAP-Schema-21.0.1"). Pass that as schema_version when decoding so the correct label table is used — the same code can map to different labels under different schema versions.

Workflow when interpreting a certificate:

1. List the available code-lookup tables once to discover which fields are decodable (the available tables include built_form, property_type, main_fuel, transaction_type, construction_age_band, tenure, glazed_type, glazed_area, mechanical_ventilation, ventilation_type, energy_tariff, water_heating_fuel, cylinder_insulation_thickness, heat_loss_corridor, improvement_description, improvement_summary, and energy_efficiency_rating).
2. For each integer field of interest, decode the value by passing the field name, the integer value as a string, and the certificate's schema_type.

Change feed

A change-feed capability returns a list of certificate events of types removed and uprn_updated between two dates. Use it to reconcile a cached set of certificate numbers against the live register. The window cannot include today.

Bulk datasets

For loading the full register into a warehouse, two read-only capabilities wrap the bulk-file endpoints:

• A "file info" capability returns fileSize and lastUpdated for an archive without downloading it. Use it to decide whether the upstream has refreshed since your last sync.
• A "download URL" capability returns a pre-signed S3 URL with a ~30-second expiry. Start the download immediately; the URL cannot be reused or shared.

The bulk datasets are: domestic, non-domestic, non-domestic-recommendations, display, display-recommendations. Format is json or csv. The two -recommendations datasets are JSON-only.

Gotchas

• HTTP 404 on a search means "no certificates match", not an auth failure.
• Postcodes must be valid; partial postcodes are rejected with HTTP 400.
• Council and constituency filters use full names ("Manchester", "Chelsea and Fulham"), not ONS or constituency codes.
• Address is a partial-match free-text field; combine it with postcode for precise lookups.
• Bulk-file pre-signed URLs expire in ~30 seconds — they are not a stable link the user can click later.