Commercial EPC Tiverton

A mill town with a logistics corridor

Tiverton's commercial property splits neatly into old and new, and they present oppositeassessment problems.

Industrial heritage. Tiverton's history as a textile town has left large, old industrialbuildings still in commercial use. These are difficult to assess well: high volumes,minimal insulation, heating systems designed for a different occupancy, andconstruction that does not fit the standard categories. Assessed carelessly they rate verypoorly. Assessed properly, with the actual construction and services recorded ratherthan defaults applied, the rating is frequently better than expected — sometimes byenough to matter for a letting.

The M5 corridor. Junction 27 and Tiverton Parkway have made the eastern side of thearea a distribution location. Modern large-footprint warehousing, generallystraightforward to assess, and generally over the 1,000m² threshold that brings the 2031EPC B requirement into play.

Tiverton Business Park and the trading estates. Small to medium trade and lightindustrial units, mixed ages.

Town centre. Fore Street, Gold Street and the surrounding commercial core. Smallerretail and office units, much of it in older buildings, some listed, often with residentialabove.

Public sector. Mid Devon District Council and the town's schools and public buildings —several of which will need a Display Energy Certificate rather than an EPC.

Getting a fair rating on an older building

The single biggest cause of an unfairly poor commercial EPC on Tiverton's older stock isdefault assumptions. Where an assessor cannot establish what a wall is made of or whenthe boiler was installed, the software applies a conservative default — and on anineteenth-century mill building the defaults are pessimistic.

Recording the building properly takes longer on site. It also frequently produces amaterially better rating, which on a letting or a MEES-marginal building is worthconsiderably more than the difference in fee.