Are Councils buying fake EPCs?

 With the governments push towards energy efficiency private landlords are concerned about the cost of achieving an EPC of C.

Currently Council housing does not need to meet and EPC of E but the direction of travel for councils is that they will need to achieve an EPC of C at some time in the future.

A friend of mine lives in a council house and I was discussing with him the recent assessment of his council property.

It was the first time ever the property had been assessed - he has lived there for 30+ years and the council hasnt done anything to the property.

The assessor was very negative about the property saying it's unlikely to meet performance standards.  There was very little loft insulation, no cavity wall insulation, the boiler was 40 years old and not energy efficient, many of the light fittings were not LED etc. 

So whilst down the pub we looked up his new EPC and we were both very surprised to find it had and EPC of C. 

It reports the 40 year old boiler as Good

There are no TRVS and minimal controllers yet the rating for this is Good

About 50% of the lighting is not LED yet it was ranked as Very good

His property is mid terraced and his neighbours have the same design of property but are now privately owned.  So we looked up the EPCs of the adjacent properties - one was D and the other was  E.  They have energy efficient boilers and apparently have good loft insulation yet score worse than the council property.

So the question has to be asked how come the inferior council property is C whilst neighbouring properties are E. 

Are the council buying fake EPCs to avoid future expenditure ? 

Sign my petition to make councils and social landlords comply with the same rules as private landlords and stop council tenants living in cold damp homes.