In a Scottish Statutory Instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, ministers have made two immediate changes to the country’s building energy rules: the cost of lodging energy performance data is going up, and the full start date for Scotland’s 2025 regime has been pushed back by 18 months. The Energy Performance of Buildings (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2026 were made on 28 October 2026 and apply in Scotland only. Most of the instrument came into force on 30 October 2026, while the fee changes in regulation 2 took effect on 31 October 2026.

For assessors, landlords, housing bodies and property firms, the first part of the change sits in the older 2008 regulations. The new wording replaces regulations 10 and 10A and resets how energy performance data is registered, stored and charged for. The regulations now state that there must be one or more registers from which an energy performance certificate and a recommendations report can be produced. Each register must be maintained by a keeper, and separate registers can exist for different purposes or different classes of buildings or building units.

The administrative rules are fairly clear. Where a member of an approved organisation issues an EPC or a recommendations report, that person must make sure the related energy performance data is sent to the relevant register before the document is issued. Once entered, that data must sit under a unique reference and cannot normally be altered. The one stated exception is green deal information, which can be updated in line with the framework rules. The register must also keep the data for at least 10 years from the date it is entered.

The financial change is the part many in the sector will notice first. Where the keeper of a register is a Scottish public authority, the fee for entering data linked to a dwelling is now £6.00. For a building or building unit other than a dwelling, the fee is now £15.50. The explanatory note spells out the increase in plain terms. The charge for homes rises from £2.60 to £6.00, while the fee for other properties moves from £12.10 to £15.50. It is not a dramatic sum on a single certificate, but for firms handling volume work it is still another cost to price in.

The second half of the instrument is about time rather than money. Scotland’s Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations 2025 were due to come fully into force on 31 October 2026. That date has now been moved to 30 April 2028. That matters because the 2025 regulations were meant to mark the next stage of the Scottish system. Instead, ministers have given the sector a longer runway, and the change carries through the transitional rules tied to approved organisations, accreditation schemes and older arrangements still being kept alive while the switch is delayed.

The date changes run right through the saving and transitional provisions. References that had pointed to late October 2026 now move to late April 2028, and dates that had been set at 31 October 2027 now move to 30 April 2029. A longer-stop date of 31 October 2031 is also pushed out to 30 April 2033. In plain English, the old framework stays in place for longer while the new one waits. For anyone managing compliance diaries across portfolios, that is the practical point: Scotland’s timetable has shifted, and paperwork, accreditation planning and system changes need to shift with it.

The legal route is also worth noting. The instrument says the Scottish Ministers acted under powers in the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 and the Energy Act 2023, and that a draft had already been laid before and approved by the Scottish Parliament. It was signed at St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh on 28 October 2026 by Stephen Gethins, authorised to sign on behalf of the Scottish Ministers. Dry stuff on the page, certainly, but not trivial in practice.

For readers across the North of England, this is one more sign that property regulation is increasingly being shaped on different tracks outside Westminster. Scotland-only rules may stop at the border in law, but plenty of surveyors, energy assessors, developers and advisers work on both sides of it. The message from this amendment is straightforward enough. The back-office charge for registering EPC data has gone up now, while the bigger reform package due under the 2025 regulations has been held back until 30 April 2028. Anyone trading across regions will need the Scottish dates kept separate and watched properly.