Key terms explained for the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive

An Eligible new build must meet the following criteria:

• The property must have been built principally using the labour or resources of the first owner. This means that the first owner of the property must have either physically constructed it or financed its construction. Where the first owner financed the construction of the property, this can be through the use of a custom-build mortgage or loan.
• The first owner and all subsequent owners of the property must be individuals. The property cannot have been owned, wholly or partly, and at any stage, by a person who is not an individual. If you buy an “off-plan” property from a developer, it is unlikely to be eligible, even if you input substantially into the design, including instructing the developer to install renewable heating.
• Must be first occupied on or after the installation was commissioned

If you are replacing an existing heating system in a property, we would class the property as retrofit. This also applies in a new property where an existing heating system was included during the construction.

If you renovated your domestic property significantly (e.g. you stripped the building down to a shell and re-built, or extended the property), it will have been occupied, at some point, before the renewable heating system was commissioned. You will not be able to meet the eligible new build criteria and will need to follow the normal ‘retrofit’ application route.

If your property was converted from a building used for non-residential purposes (e.g. a barn or warehouse) into a dwelling, it will not have been occupied (as a ‘dwelling’) while it was used for non-residential purposes. If your converted property was not occupied before the renewable heating system was installed, you will need to meet the eligible new build criteria.

An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is a report that assesses the energy efficiency of a property and recommends specific ways in which the efficiency of your property could be improved. A property will be considered to be an ‘eligible property’ under the scheme if it has been issued an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) on the basis that it is a dwelling (referred to from this point onwards as a ‘domestic EPC’). 

 If you do not have a copy of an EPC for your property, you may be able to access a copy online, if one already exists. If you are in England or Wales, you can find an EPC here. You can check whether an EPC already exists for a property in Scotland here.

An EPC reference number is required as part of the application process for the Domestic RHI. The EPC is used to:

• determine whether the property can be considered domestic
• evidence that the required loft and cavity wall insulation measures have been installed. 
• determine the heat demand figure used for the payments calculation for non-metered biomass and heat pump applicants.

The heat demand figure is only included in EPCs for dwellings. A non-domestic EPC would not show this figure and therefore could not be used to work out payments using the deeming methodology.

Your EPC must include a heat demand figure and must be less than 24 months old at the date of application. Your EPC needs to accurately reflect information about your house, so if you have undertaken construction work on your property you may need to get a new EPC to ensure it reflects your circumstances. If you get an EPC during construction work, referred to as Predicted Energy Assessments (PEAs), it won’t be able to accurately reflect the final state of the property, so we can’t accept it. We will always ask you for the most recent valid EPC available for your property. 

If your EPC states that either loft or cavity wall insulation are required you must get an assessor to produce a second EPC after installing the insulation to prove that you have done this. Often your EPC assessor will be able to provide this service, however a list of Domestic Energy assessors is available at: Get a new energy certificate - GOV.UK and Energy Performance Certificates - mygov.scot You may be exempt from this requirement, please see Annex 1 in the Essential guide. To find out how we determine payments based on EPCs (if you are not metered for payment), please see Annex 3 and 4 in the Essential guide.

If we have reason to believe that the information on your EPC is incorrect, we may ask you to provide us with a new EPC. Should this occur, we’ll to explain why a new EPC is needed. If we request a new EPC, you must provide this so that we can consider your eligibility for the scheme – refusing to do so will mean that we don’t have all the information required, and we won’t be able to accredit you to the scheme.

For more information about the eligibility criteria, please see Chapter 2 of the Essential Guide.