FLOOR AREAS

Two points about floor areas in Commercial property EPC's....

1) The EPC that you provide to interested parties when you market a property for sale or for letting, should assess only the same parts of the building - not more, not less. If you have an exisiting EPC that includes parts that are not to be included or excludes parts that are to be included in the demise, then that existing document, despite being valid in other respects (i.e., less than ten years old) is not deemed suitable to be used to support the marketing. A new EPC should therefore be commissioned.

You may be faced with a problem when a demise that it was intended should be offered as a whole, ends up with interest from parties who wish to occupy only parts of that demise. To meet the requirements of the applicable Regulations, EPC's that match the intended sale/letting areas should be provided to the parties, before they commit to a lease or a purchase, so that the information provided by the EPC can inform their final decision to proceed or not.

2) Energy Assessors work to a slightly different methodology than Building Surveyors and Rating Valuation Surveyors in that we need to take account of all parts of the internal space. That includes corridors, stairs, storage cupboards, service voids, toilets and kitchenette areas as well as the space taken up by the internal walls and partitions of the building. These are areas that are excluded from other survey types, as they do not form part of the usable floor area.

The energy assessment process includes everything up to, but excluding, the external and party walls. The 'heat loss perimeter' of the assessed spaces is at the boundary between those parts of the building occupied, used and heated or cooled by the occupants and the adjoining environment, be that to the exterior, adjoining premises or loft and floor voids. As a consequence the floor area stated on your EPC will not generally match the floor area stated in sales particulars or other official sources. This is to be expected. It also means that it can be less clear what parts of a building are included on an existing EPC - see para one above - and care should be taken to check areas using the appropriate methodology.