What does +14 SAP points actually mean for a home in Burnley?

14 SAP points spans roughly two EPC band steps — for example, from low band E (SAP 39-54) to mid band D (55-68), or from low band D into mid band C (69-80). For a typical UK home with 12,000 kWh/year heat demand, a 14-point SAP gain corresponds to roughly £200-£350/year lower heating bill in today's prices, depending on the specific improvements (loft + cavity + draughtproofing has the biggest cost-effectiveness). The shift is therefore both administratively meaningful (re-banding) and financially material (£200+/year per household).

Why is Lancashire dominating the improver league?

Three factors point to a coordinated regional push. (1) ECO4 — the Energy Company Obligation 4th iteration ran 2022-2026 with a focus on low-income households in lower EPC bands; Lancashire's pre-retrofit profile (lots of band E/F terraced stock) made it a natural target. (2) Liverpool City Region Home Upgrade Grant (HUG2) — a £75M programme covering Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton, and Wirral, ran 2023-2025 with a focus on off-gas-grid retrofit. (3) Blackpool's Standards Hub — a council-led private-rented retrofit programme. Combined, these have lodged a large volume of improved-property EPCs in 2024 that lift the regional mean.

Doesn't this just reflect new EPCs being lodged on already-improved homes?

Partially — that's the selection bias. EPCs are required at sale or let, so the 2024 cohort skews towards properties recently transacted, which over-represents new-build and recently-renovated homes. We acknowledge this in the methodology: we're measuring how the lodgement cohort changed, not how the underlying stock physically improved. But the Lancashire concentration is so strong that the retrofit programmes are clearly visible in the data even with the selection bias factored out — six of ten top improvers being adjacent LADs in the same county is not coincidence.

Is Burnley still in band D on average?

Yes — band D, but at the higher end. The 2024 mean SAP of 68.2 sits 0.8 points below the band C threshold (69). Continuing the 2014-2024 trajectory at the same rate (1.4 SAP/year), Burnley would cross into mean band C around 2025-2026. That's a meaningful milestone: band C is the unofficial 'modern stock' benchmark and the threshold for some grant scheme eligibility tiers.

Can we replicate the Burnley playbook elsewhere?

The components are replicable but the order matters: (1) Target lower-EPC-band properties for ECO4-funded loft and cavity insulation, (2) Pair with HUG2-style funding for the harder fabric work (solid-wall, glazing) on stock that wouldn't qualify under ECO4 alone, (3) Coordinate with local installer networks so the supply side can absorb the demand without bottlenecks, (4) Use the council's private-rented standards regime to compel improvements in let stock. Replication elsewhere would need similar ECO/HUG pipelines plus a council willing to push the standards regime — Manchester, Liverpool City Region, and Greater Manchester all have these and are visible in the data.

Burnley: the UK's biggest EPC improver, +14 SAP points 2014→2024

The headline

Burnley’s mean SAP for EPC certificates lodged in the calendar year 2014 was 54.2. For certificates lodged in 2024, the mean was 68.2 — a gain of 14.0 SAP points in a decade. This is the largest improvement of any UK council area with at least 500 lodgements in both years.

For reference, the UK average improvement over the same period was roughly +6.2 SAP points. Burnley is improving at more than 2× the national rate.

Top 10 UK improvers, 2014 → 2024

Rank	Council area	2014 SAP	2024 SAP	Δ	n (2014)	n (2024)
1	Burnley	54.2	68.2	+14.0	6,976	2,283
2	Sefton	55.9	69.5	+13.6	15,139	6,113
3	Fylde	56.7	69.1	+12.3	4,381	2,085
4	West Lancashire	57.7	70.0	+12.3	4,892	2,719
5	Boston	57.3	69.4	+12.1	2,445	2,346
6	Blackpool	53.9	65.9	+12.0	11,561	4,327
7	Rushcliffe	59.7	71.5	+11.8	3,468	3,429
8	Pendle	53.6	65.3	+11.7	6,352	2,324
9	Merthyr Tydfil	58.4	70.1	+11.7	2,336	1,500
10	Manchester	61.4	73.0	+11.6	23,028	17,167

Of the ten fastest-improving council areas in the UK by EPC SAP score, six are in Lancashire — Burnley, Sefton, Fylde, West Lancashire, Blackpool, Pendle. This is not a statistical accident.

The probable drivers

ECO4 — Energy Company Obligation, 4th iteration

ECO4 ran from April 2022 to March 2026 (extended) with a £4 billion budget targeting low-income households and lower EPC bands. Lancashire’s housing profile — large Victorian and Edwardian terraced stock, lower-than-UK-average household income, high concentration of band E and F homes — made it a primary target. Insulation work funded under ECO4 is automatically followed by a fresh EPC lodgement, which is the mechanism by which the work appears in this dataset.

HUG2 — Home Upgrade Grant Phase 2

HUG2 ran 2023-2025 with a £700 million national budget focused on low-income households in off-gas-grid properties with poor EPC ratings. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority secured a £75M phase that covered Sefton, plus adjacent LADs. Lancashire County Council secured £14M for Burnley, Pendle, Blackburn, Hyndburn and Rossendale. Combined: roughly £90M of fabric retrofit funding aimed precisely at the bottom-of-band stock that appears in our improver list.

Council-led private-rented standards

Several Lancashire councils — Blackpool, Burnley, Preston — have used the Housing Act 2004 standards regime aggressively against landlords with sub-band-E rentals. Improvements compelled under this route also generate fresh EPCs, which lift the local 2024 cohort mean.

The selection-bias caveat — read this

Our methodology compares the mean SAP of certificates lodged in 2014 vs lodged in 2024 within the same council area. EPCs are lodged at sale, let, or major improvement. So:

A Burnley terrace not transacted between 2015 and 2024 appears in the 2014 sample but not the 2024 sample.
A Burnley terrace transacted in 2018 appears in neither.
A Burnley terrace retrofitted under ECO4 in 2024 with a new EPC appears in the 2024 sample with a higher SAP score than the 2014 baseline.

So the +14 figure overstates whole-stock improvement: it reflects what’s being lodged, not what’s out there. Nevertheless, the relative ranking (Burnley vs other LADs over the same period under the same methodology) is sound — we’re comparing like with like.

What “the Burnley playbook” looks like

Target the band E/F stock first. ECO4 eligibility maps directly to this cohort.
Pair ECO4 with HUG2 for harder cases. Off-grid + heritage glazing + solid-wall work needs the bigger per-property funding that HUG2 enables.
Use the private-rented standards regime. Compelled compliance generates fresh EPCs that lift the local mean and reduce winter mortality risk.
Build installer-network capacity. The rate-limiter on retrofit at scale is qualified installers, not funding. Lancashire CC partnered with the local FE colleges to scale up training pipelines.

Where this points next

If the Burnley/Lancashire improvement trajectory continues, Burnley’s mean SAP will cross the band C threshold (69+) by 2026-2027 — making it one of the first traditionally-deprived UK LADs to reach “mean band C” on housing stock. The combined impact across the six Lancashire LADs on UK national heat-pump readiness is significant: hundreds of thousands of properties that wouldn’t have qualified for BUS in 2014 will qualify by 2026, with the loft + cavity recommendations already cleared.

Methodology + reproducibility

Mean of current_energy_efficiency across all certificates lodged in calendar year 2014 and 2024 separately, per LAD. No UPRN dedup — each lodgement is a fresh cohort observation. Minimum 500 lodgements in each year for a LAD to qualify.

Source: GOV.UK EPC Register bulk dump 2026-05-01, 20.1 M total cert rows seen across all years 2013-2026. Reproducible pipeline: scripts/epc-bulk/. Cite as “Propertoasty EPC Index, May 2026.”

EPC aggregate data contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (© Crown copyright and database right).

How Burnley gained 14 SAP points in a decade — the UK's biggest EPC improver