Boiler and Heating Grants in England

There is no single boiler grant in England. Help towards replacing an inefficient or broken heating system comes from two main places: the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), which places legal obligations on energy suppliers to deliver energy efficiency measures to domestic premises, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which provides grants to assist with installation costs for low carbon heating¹. A third stream, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, funds energy performance improvements and low carbon heating improvements to social homes, not owner-occupied ones³.

The direction of travel matters more than any single figure. ECO has been extended to 31 December 2026 to meet existing targets and remediate non-compliant installations, but funding for ECO ended in March 2026 under Budget 2025, and energy suppliers have now stopped advertising or accepting applications for ECO4 funding⁴. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme, by contrast, is the live route for households replacing a fossil fuel system with a heat pump, with upfront grants of up to £7,500 in England and Wales³.

For a household, the practical question is which scheme, if any, fits the property and the circumstances, and what remains after the grant is spent. A grant lowers the upfront cost of changing how a home is heated. It does not remove the dependence that follows: a heat pump still runs on grid electricity bought from a supplier, and the grant itself is paid to an installer rather than to the household⁵.

The short answer

England has a grant for low carbon heating and a closing scheme for energy efficiency, and they do different jobs. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme provides upfront grants to help reduce the cost of installing a low-carbon heating system, such as a heat pump or, in limited circumstances, a biomass boiler, and it operates across England and Wales². It is not a boiler grant in the sense most households mean: it does not pay for a new gas boiler.

ECO is the scheme that has historically paid for boilers. It places legal obligations on energy suppliers to deliver energy efficiency measures to domestic premises, and it is designed to tackle fuel poverty and help reduce carbon emissions⁸. Between 2013 and December 2025 ECO delivered 4.4 million measures in 2.6 million homes across Great Britain, of which 21% were new boilers⁴. That is the closest thing England has had to a free boiler grant, and it is now closing.

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is the third stream, and it is not open to owner-occupiers. It provides funding to local authorities, combined authorities, registered providers of social housing, and registered charities that own social housing in England, for installing energy efficiency upgrades and low-carbon heating measures in English social housing¹⁰. A household in a council or housing association property may see work funded this way, but the application is made by the landlord, not the tenant.

The figures: £7,500 headline, £5,000 category

The figures divide into grant amounts and scheme totals, and they are worth separating because they answer different questions.

On grant amounts, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the clearest. Official guidance describes upfront grants of up to £7,500 for domestic properties and small non-domestic properties in England and Wales³. The published grant categories set out £5,000, with £5,000 for biomass boilers in limited circumstances and £2,500 for air-to-air heat pumps⁴. The documents do not resolve the difference between the £7,500 headline and the £5,000 category figure, so both stand as published.

On scheme totals, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund carries an indicative national pot of £1,300m, with an additional £295m for FY 26/27 and a further £100m announced in April with a focus on solar PV and battery installation⁷. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme sits behind £2.7bn of investment in grants¹¹.

The delivery record is the other half of the picture. ECO delivered 4.4 million measures in 2.6 million homes across Great Britain between 2013 and December 2025. Of those measures, 25% were cavity wall insulation, 21% new boilers, 18% loft insulation, 23% other heating measures mainly new heating controls, 6% solid wall insulation and 4% other insulation⁴. The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund had reported around 25,770 measures in around 12,900 households up to the end of July 2026¹⁰.

What drives the schemes

Three forces drive the shape of English heating grants: fuel poverty, carbon targets, and the cost of changing a heating system.

Fuel poverty is the stated purpose of ECO. Its main objective is to reduce fuel poverty by improving the least energy efficient housing occupied by low income and vulnerable households, and it supports energy efficiency measures in the home of those considered to be in fuel poverty⁸. The scheme places a Home Heating Cost Reduction Obligation on medium and large energy suppliers, with the overall target divided between suppliers based on their relative share of the domestic gas and electricity market⁹. It is funded through a levy on energy bills, so the cost is spread across bill payers rather than raised through taxation⁸.

Carbon targets drive the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. It aims to incentivise the installation of low carbon technologies through providing a grant towards the upfront costs, and by offering upfront grants it makes these technologies more affordable and appealing to households¹³. The scheme is the main lever for moving homes off fossil fuel heating without a mandate.

The third driver is cost, and it is also the reason ECO is ending. The government decided to end ECO as it did not represent strong value for money⁴. That judgement sits alongside a delivery record of 4.4 million measures, which shows the scheme reached scale but at a cost the Treasury was no longer willing to carry.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The schemes do not map neatly onto the four nations, and the differences matter for anyone checking eligibility.

ECO is an energy efficiency scheme for Great Britain, so it covers England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland⁷. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme provides grants for heat pump installations across England and Wales, so Scotland and Northern Ireland sit outside it¹⁵. The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is England-only, funding energy efficiency upgrades and low-carbon heating measures in English social housing¹⁰.

Wales runs additional activity alongside the GB-wide schemes. The Welsh Government provided a further £500,000 of funding to support local authorities in 2024 to 2025, and in February 2025 Ofgem confirmed there were over 11,600 ECO Flex submissions made by Welsh local authorities¹⁶. That flexibility route is the mechanism by which Welsh councils direct ECO funding at households who would not qualify through the standard routes.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements, and a household there should look at the devolved guidance rather than the England-facing schemes. The practical effect is that a householder in England has access to the widest set of routes, while a householder in Northern Ireland has none of the three described here.

The rules: who applies, what is funded, how the money moves

The rules fall into three groups: who can apply, what can be funded, and how the money moves.

On who can apply, ECO supports energy efficiency measures in the home of those considered to be in fuel poverty, focusing on low-income, vulnerable, and fuel poor households⁹. Grants and loans are made available for homeowner-occupiers, landlords and tenants for insulation works and heating installations¹⁷. The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is narrower: funding goes to local authorities, combined authorities, registered providers of social housing, and registered charities that own social housing in England¹⁰.

On what can be funded, ECO4 covers insulation, boilers and central heating, and solar and renewable energy technologies, and it is designed to tackle fuel poverty while also reducing carbon emissions through supporting whole house energy efficiency improvements for eligible households¹⁸. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme funds low carbon heating, not gas boilers².

On how the money moves, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant is applied upfront as a discount to the cost of your installation, and the household does not receive the grant directly: it is paid to the installer⁵. That single rule explains most of the confusion around "free boiler grants", because no money reaches the household.

Local authority flexibility

The flexibility route is where a household outside the standard eligibility criteria may still find help. Local authorities can set their own criteria for eligibility for funding for domestic energy efficiency measures, and they must publish a statement of intent that defines who is eligible for funding before this can happen¹⁷. Energy companies can spend up to a maximum of 10% of their full obligation within these criteria, which caps how much of the scheme can be directed this way¹⁷.

Participation under these routes is optional for suppliers, so a council area may have a statement of intent and still see little activity⁷. The Welsh figures show what the route can achieve where councils use it: over 11,600 ECO Flex submissions by Welsh local authorities by February 2025¹⁶.

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund in practice

For social housing, the fund operates through landlords. Wave 3 opened for applications from local authorities, combined authorities, registered providers of social housing and registered charities that own social housing, either directly or as part of a consortium¹⁹. The commitment of £1.3 billion for Wave 3 has been more than matched by the sector, meaning over £2.6 billion is currently in delivery, and Wave 3 will run to September 2028, with all grant funding transferred to grant recipients and spent by 31 March 2028¹⁹.

The fund targets Energy Performance Certificate band C social housing stock currently below that standard, with the objective of delivering warm, energy efficient homes²⁰. In Greater Manchester, the combined authority has received a proportionate share of the national scheme funding, and constituent local authorities and housing associations need to seek funding via the combined authority rather than the national scheme¹⁴. Smart heating controls remain eligible, digitalisation costs can no longer be grant funded, and void properties can be included if they are receiving low carbon heating measures¹⁴.

What a grant means for energy independence

A grant changes who pays for a heating upgrade, not who supplies the energy afterwards. That distinction is the whole of the independence question.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme moves a household off gas and onto electricity, which reduces dependence on the gas network and on imported gas. It does not reduce dependence on a supplier or on the grid: a heat pump runs on electricity bought under a tariff, and the household has no more control over the price of that electricity than it had over the price of gas. The grant is also paid to the installer as a discount, so the household never holds the capital and cannot redirect it⁵.

ECO worked differently. Because it placed obligations on suppliers and was funded through a levy on energy bills, it delivered physical improvements to the fabric of the home: insulation, heating controls, and in 21% of cases a new boiler⁴. Insulation is the one measure that permanently reduces how much energy a home needs, and it is the only part of the picture that reduces dependence rather than shifting it from one network to another.

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund adds solar PV and battery installation to its focus, following a further £100m announced in April¹². Generation and storage on the property is the closest any of these schemes comes to genuine independence, because it reduces the volume of energy bought in. It remains a minority of the funding and is directed at social housing rather than owner-occupied homes.

For a household weighing up a replacement, the grant is one input among several. The cost of the installation itself, the running cost of the fuel, and the disruption of the work all bear on the decision, and the grant does not change any of them. What it changes is the upfront barrier, and for a household already considering a heat pump, that barrier is the one that most often stops the work.