Warm Healthy Homes Strategy announced for Northern Ireland

The Department for Communities has announced the Warm Healthy Homes Strategy 2026 to 2036, described as intended to help address fuel poverty¹. The announcement date has not been reported in the available material.

The strategy covers a decade from 2026 to 2036¹. No funding figure, eligibility criteria, delivery body or target for the number of homes treated has been reported. A separate scheme has been announced to cut energy bills in Northern Ireland by £30 a year, but the material does not state whether that scheme sits inside the strategy or alongside it¹.

The context is a housing stock unusually dependent on heating oil. At the 2021 Census, 49.5% of Northern Ireland households used oil as their only central heating source, 31.6% used mains gas only, 15.0% used two or more types, and 1.6% used electric only¹. Adding households that use oil alongside another fuel brings the share using oil in some form to 62.5%¹. Between 2011 and 2021 the oil-only share fell from 62.2% to 49.5% while mains gas only rose from 17.2% to 31.6%¹.

Source: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Census 2021¹

Households using alternative fuels are more likely than others to be classified as fuel poverty, and more likely to experience deeper or more extreme fuel poverty, with lower energy efficiency of off-grid properties given as one of the main reasons¹. Across Great Britain, an estimated 4.8 million households, or 16.0% of domestic properties, were not connected to the gas grid in 2024¹.

Heating oil prices are not regulated in the same way as gas and electricity, so they can vary day to day and between local areas to a much greater extent¹. Average UK heating oil prices rose from 53 pence per litre in February 2026 to £1.04 per litre in March 2026, a 95% increase in a single month, following strikes by Israel and the United States against Iran on 28 February 2026¹. At March 2026 prices, mains gas was estimated as the cheapest way to heat a standard three-bed semi-detached house in the UK, followed by heating oil, then LPG¹.

"The Department for Communities recently announced a Warm Healthy Homes Strategy 2026 to 2036, intended to help address fuel poverty"

Why it matters for households

For a household in Northern Ireland, the practical question raised by a fuel poverty strategy is what it changes about the cost and condition of the home itself. The fuel poverty rate in Northern Ireland is measured on a different basis from England, Scotland and Wales, so comparisons across nations are not straightforward¹. The strategy's stated purpose is to address fuel poverty over ten years¹, but the material does not set out which measures it will fund, who will qualify, or how homes will be selected.

Energy independence for an oil-heated home is limited in a specific way: the fuel is bought in discrete deliveries, priced locally and unregulated, and stored on site¹. That structure means a household's exposure to a price spike is immediate, as the February to March 2026 movement shows¹. The Affordable Warmth Scheme and help for low-income households in Northern Ireland are the existing routes through which insulation and heating measures have been delivered, and the new strategy's relationship to them has not been reported.

The wider policy picture includes a phase-out date for installing new oil and LPG boilers and new coal heating in off-grid homes, put back to 2035¹, and the January 2026 Warm Homes Plan, which discussed off-grid homes with a focus on Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants¹. How the Northern Ireland strategy aligns with those GB-wide arrangements is not stated in the material.

What happens next

The strategy runs to 2036¹. No implementation milestones, spending allocations or reporting dates have been reported.

Sources1 cited

1. [](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9838/CBP-9838.pdf), researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk