Enfield has the highest share of flats with an EPC certificate of any London borough — 48.5%. That is still lower than the worst-performing borough in Greater Manchester (Bolton, 50.4%), where house and flat EPC coverage was mapped across the conurbation's ten boroughs last week. Running the same check across all 33 London boroughs shows the capital trails the rest of England on flat EPC coverage by a wide margin — and the gap between how many flats and how many houses have ever had a certificate varies hugely from one borough to the next.
An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is generated when a home is sold, let, or newly built — not on a fixed schedule — so "has this address ever had a certificate" is a signal of how often a property changes hands or enters the rental market, not a measure of how energy-efficient it is. Our national coverage ranking found seven of the twenty lowest-flat-coverage local authorities in England and Wales are London boroughs. This piece puts all 33 side by side.
The headline numbers
Across London's roughly 1 million rated flat addresses, 23.4% have ever had an EPC certificate lodged, against 70.6% of London's roughly 1.07 million house addresses (based on HM Land Registry and EPC open-data address counts, fetched 2026-10-09). Both figures sit below the England & Wales averages reported in our national piece (30.8% for flats, 73.3% for houses) — London under-performs the rest of the country on both property types, not just flats.
| Borough | Flat EPC coverage | House EPC coverage | Gap (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of London | 1.9% | 19.5%* | 17.7 |
| Westminster | 6.7% | 62.5% | 55.9 |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 9.4% | 66.2% | 56.8 |
| Camden | 11.4% | 58.4% | 47.0 |
| Tower Hamlets | 14.2% | 73.1% | 58.9 |
| Hackney | 15.4% | 62.9% | 47.5 |
| Islington | 16.4% | 62.7% | 46.4 |
| Lambeth | 18.0% | 67.8% | 49.8 |
| Southwark | 18.2% | 70.7% | 52.4 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 19.3% | 70.3% | 51.0 |
| Kingston upon Thames | 19.7% | 71.0% | 51.3 |
| Greenwich | 21.9% | 73.8% | 51.9 |
| Haringey | 22.9% | 68.2% | 45.3 |
| Barnet | 23.2% | 68.1% | 44.9 |
| Wandsworth | 23.7% | 73.2% | 49.6 |
| Bromley | 23.8% | 70.7% | 46.8 |
| Sutton | 25.8% | 69.1% | 43.3 |
| Brent | 26.8% | 66.6% | 39.8 |
| Croydon | 27.6% | 70.3% | 42.7 |
| Lewisham | 28.1% | 70.8% | 42.7 |
| Newham | 28.6% | 77.2% | 48.6 |
| Richmond upon Thames | 29.8% | 70.8% | 41.0 |
| Ealing | 30.4% | 69.0% | 38.6 |
| Hounslow | 30.4% | 71.0% | 40.6 |
| Merton | 33.1% | 71.1% | 38.0 |
| Harrow | 34.0% | 68.4% | 34.4 |
| Havering | 36.2% | 72.8% | 36.6 |
| Waltham Forest | 39.9% | 72.1% | 32.3 |
| Redbridge | 41.2% | 69.0% | 27.8 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 41.2% | 78.6% | 37.5 |
| Hillingdon | 45.0% | 73.2% | 28.2 |
| Bexley | 46.4% | 70.4% | 24.0 |
| Enfield | 48.5% | 70.4% | 22.0 |
*City of London's house figure is based on only 87 rated house addresses — too small a sample to compare meaningfully against the other 32 boroughs, and excluded from the ranges below.
House coverage is stable. Flat coverage is not.
Leaving City of London's thin house sample aside, every other borough's house coverage sits inside a 20.2-point band: 58.4% (Camden) to 78.6% (Barking and Dagenham). Flat coverage spans more than twice that range — 6.7% (Westminster) to 48.5% (Enfield), a 41.8-point spread. This is the same shape found across Greater Manchester's ten boroughs, where house coverage held to a 6.6-point band while flat coverage ranged over 40 points. London's house-coverage band is three times wider than Greater Manchester's, but the underlying pattern — flats are the volatile axis, houses are the stable one — holds in both conurbations.
Inner London's historic conversion flats and large private-rented blocks are the likely driver: a flat that hasn't been sold, re-let, or newly built in the EPC era (since 2007/2008) simply never generates a certificate, no matter how long someone has lived there. Houses change hands too, but London's house stock skews toward the outer boroughs, where turnover and new-build activity have been higher over the past two decades.
The widest and narrowest within-borough gaps
Tower Hamlets has the widest gap between its flat and house coverage of any borough with a usable sample: 58.9 percentage points, driven by the combination of the capital's largest flat stock outside Wandsworth (69,610 addresses) at just 14.2% coverage, against 73.1% coverage on a much smaller house stock. Kensington and Chelsea (56.8pp) and Westminster (55.9pp) — London's most expensive boroughs by median flat price — follow close behind.
At the other end, Enfield (22.0pp) and Bexley (24.0pp) have the narrowest flat-house coverage gaps in the capital. Both are outer-London boroughs with comparatively affordable flat stock and, on this data, higher flat turnover.
Does price explain the gap? Only partly
Comparing each borough's 2025 median flat sale price (Land Registry, category A transactions) against its flat coverage rate shows a clear inverse relationship — expensive boroughs tend to have lower flat coverage. Kensington and Chelsea's £955,000 median flat price pairs with 9.4% coverage; Barking and Dagenham's £240,000 median pairs with 41.2% coverage.
But price alone doesn't fully explain it. Kingston upon Thames has a mid-range £385,000 median flat price — cheaper than Wandsworth (£535,501) — yet its flat coverage (19.7%) is lower than Wandsworth's (23.7%). Our Greater Manchester piece found an even starker counter-example nationally: Manchester's £220,000 median flat price sits alongside almost identical coverage to Kensington and Chelsea's £955,000 median. Coverage tracks how often a property changes hands or is re-let, not what it's worth — treat it as a turnover signal, not a wealth or efficiency one.
What this means if you're buying or renting
A low EPC-coverage borough doesn't mean the homes there are inefficient — it means fewer of them have been required to produce a certificate recently. If you're viewing a flat with no EPC on record, that's common in parts of inner London and is not, by itself, a red flag. Any home being sold or let today needs a valid certificate before marketing, regardless of whether a previous one exists. Check a specific property's EPC history and modelled rating via the government's Find an Energy Certificate service before relying on coverage statistics for any individual home.
Try the Homecost tool for a London postcode — for example SW1A 1AA in Westminster — to see sale history, council tax banding and EPC data for a specific street.
Based on HM Land Registry Price Paid transactions and the national EPC open-data register for all 33 London local authorities, cross-referenced via Homecost's property data. Data fetched 2026-10-09.