National Buildings Database – Understanding Great Britain’s Non-Domestic Buildings

The National Buildings Database (NBD) represents a landmark step in understanding Great Britain’s built environment. For the first time, a single, comprehensive inventory brings together 2.2 million non-domestic premises — offices, shops, schools, hospitals, factories and warehouses — mapped in detail across their geometry, age, construction type, fuel use and energy performance. Developed by UCL Energy Institute’s Building Stock Lab in collaboration with Verco and GC Insight, and commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the NBD sets a new benchmark for building stock analysis in the UK.

The database draws on an extensive range of data sources, including Energy Performance Certificates, Land Registry records, Ordnance Survey mapping and meter-level energy data, providing a granular snapshot of the entire non-domestic stock as of 1st April 2023. Its scope goes far beyond any previous inventory, covering building structure, heating systems, fuel types, heritage status and urban or rural classification.

The NBD reveals that 41% of non-domestic buildings are mixed-use, complicating retrofit coordination, and that 31% carry heritage constraints that directly limit decarbonisation options. It also exposes significant inaccuracies in Energy Performance Certificates, which systematically overestimate lighting and heating consumption whilst underestimating cooling demand — a gap that will grow as the climate warms.

Designed to inform policy at every scale, the NBD is a critical tool for planning energy efficiency programmes, heat network zoning, retrofit strategies and net zero pathways across Great Britain’s built environment.