Warm Homes Plan (flagship programme): Warm homes plan funding

What the Warm Homes Plan actually funds, and how to get your share

The Warm Homes Plan is the centre of gravity for almost every home energy grant in the UK right now, which is exactly why Warm Homes Plan funding is so often misunderstood. It is not a single application you fill in and wait on. It is the government umbrella programme, published in January 2026, that brings the existing schemes together under one strategy and adds money and a new finance route on top. The headline figure is around 15 billion pounds of public investment to upgrade up to five million homes by 2030. That money does not arrive as one cheque to one form. It flows through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, the Energy Company Obligation (ECO4), the Great British Insulation Scheme, the council-delivered Warm Homes: Local Grant, and a planned low or zero-interest finance route for households who do not qualify for grants. Getting funding from the Warm Homes Plan means working out which of those sub-schemes fits your home, and applying to that one.

That distinction matters because the picture is moving fast. The Warm Homes Plan replaces the supplier-obligation model from 2027, so there will be no ECO5. The legacy schemes, ECO4 and the Great British Insulation Scheme, are winding down through 2026 with firm closing dates. Accurate, current guidance is genuinely scarce online for that reason, most pages were written before the January 2026 plan and quietly contradict the new timeline. The job of this page is to set out the programme honestly, point you at the right sub-scheme, and send you to the official gov.uk routes so you can verify everything yourself rather than take a cold-caller's word for it.

It is also worth naming the trust problem head on, because it shapes how the Warm Homes Plan should be approached. A wave of free solar and free grant cold-callers has eroded confidence, to the point where many homeowners cannot tell a legitimate route from a scam. The difference is the delivery model. Real Warm Homes Plan funding is administered by Ofgem for ECO4 and the Great British Insulation Scheme, and by DESNZ or your council for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and the Warm Homes: Local Grant. Measures are installed by accredited installers under recognised standards, and grants like the Boiler Upgrade Scheme are deducted directly from a registered installer's invoice. You never hand over money on a doorstep or sign up to a high-pressure offer. A legitimate scheme never cold-calls demanding upfront payment or bank details, so if that happens, it is a scam, not the Warm Homes Plan.

What a typical Warm Homes Plan package looks like and how we match you to it

Because the Warm Homes Plan is a programme rather than a single product, the right way to think about sizing is matching your household to the correct route, not specifying a system. A funded home package under the plan typically combines insulation, an air source heat pump and smart controls, with a real installed value in the region of 5,000 to 25,000 pounds per home depending on the property and the measures it needs. The measures span insulation, air source heat pumps, solar PV, batteries and smart controls, and they are bundled so the fabric work comes first and the heating runs efficiently afterwards. We assess which scheme pays for which measure rather than treating it as one undifferentiated grant.

The triage is straightforward once you know the questions. If you are on a means-tested benefit and your home is EPC band D to G, ECO4 or the Warm Homes: Local Grant can fund a whole-house package at no cost to you. If you are not on benefits but your income is lower and your home is in Council Tax bands A to D with an EPC of D or below, the Great British Insulation Scheme General Group can fund insulation. If you are replacing a gas or oil boiler in England or Wales, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme contributes a fixed grant towards a heat pump regardless of income. We run you through all of these routes rather than steering you to the one that suits a single installer.

One group is often left out of the conversation entirely, and that is private renters. Several Warm Homes Plan routes do cover rented homes. ECO4 and the Warm Homes: Local Grant both cover private rented property, with the landlord's permission for the works, and the Great British Insulation Scheme is available to tenants too. The reason landlord consent is needed is simply that the measures are physical improvements to the building. There is a useful lever here as well, since under Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards landlords already cannot let the worst-rated properties, so improving the home is in the landlord's interest as much as the tenant's. If you rent, the right first step is usually a conversation with the landlord, and the funding then follows the same scheme routes as for an owner-occupier.

Costs, what you pay, and the new finance route

Warm Homes Plan packages are grant-funded rather than an investment with a payback, so the question is not when it pays for itself but how much, if anything, you contribute. For the fully funded benefit-led routes the answer is often nothing, with installed package values of 5,000 to 25,000 pounds covered by the scheme. Where a grant covers most but not all of a job, for example a heat pump install that costs more than the fixed Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant, the Warm Homes Plan introduces a multi-billion-pound finance route offering low or zero-interest loans for households who do not qualify for grants. That finance route is designed to bridge exactly the gap that has put people off in the past, the difference between a generous grant and the full install cost. Our cost guide sets out where grants stop and finance begins.

Businesses and commercial landlords sit slightly outside this domestic picture. The Warm Homes Plan is primarily for homes, so commercial premises mostly rely on capital allowances and periodic local grants rather than the household schemes. The 100 percent Annual Investment Allowance lets a business write off qualifying plant such as solar PV, heat pumps and batteries against profit, worth up to a quarter of the project value in year one for a limited company. If you are a landlord or business owner, our page on business and landlord energy funding maps that route in detail.

Funding routes in detail

The Warm Homes Plan is the strategy that funds the schemes below, so the practical routes are the sub-schemes themselves. ECO4, run by Ofgem and funded by the obligated energy suppliers, pays for insulation, first-time central heating, heating upgrades, heat pumps and solar PV at no cost for fuel-poor homes in EPC band D to G on qualifying means-tested benefits. The Great British Insulation Scheme funds a single insulation measure such as loft, cavity wall, solid wall, room-in-roof or underfloor, with a Low-Income Group and a broader General Group routed by Council Tax band. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme contributes a fixed grant towards a heat pump for homeowners and small businesses in England and Wales replacing a fossil-fuel system. The Warm Homes: Local Grant, delivered by councils rather than suppliers, funds an insulation plus low-carbon heating package for lower-income owner-occupiers and private renters in England. You can read the official programme detail on the Warm Homes Plan publication.

Compliance and the things that catch people out

The single biggest trap with Warm Homes Plan funding is treating it as one application. It is a collection of grants, loans and regulations, and detailed eligibility and application routes are still being finalised as the legacy schemes wind down through 2026. Always check the live gov.uk eligibility checker for the specific sub-scheme before committing, because rules and end dates are changing. The work itself is governed by real standards. Government-funded measures follow the PAS 2035 and PAS 2030 whole-house retrofit framework, with a qualified retrofit assessor surveying the home, a coordinator planning the measures in the right order, and the completed work lodged with TrustMark. Heat pumps must be installed by an MCS-certified installer who belongs to a consumer code, either RECC or HIES. Most insulation and air source heat pump work falls under Permitted Development, but solid wall insulation can need planning in conservation areas, heat pumps have siting and noise conditions under MCS 020, and listed buildings need Listed Building Consent.

How we approach this kind of project

Our role is to keep you on the right side of a fast-changing programme. We track the ECO4 and Great British Insulation Scheme wind-down and the Warm Homes Plan transition so you never apply to a scheme that has already closed. We map every live route rather than the one that earns the most, we work only through MCS-certified and TrustMark-registered installers, and we link every scheme to its official gov.uk or Ofgem source so you can verify it. Where a property needs both fabric and heating work, we identify which scheme pays for which measure and the order they should happen in, so the heat pump goes into an insulated home rather than a draughty one. None of this involves doorstep cold-calling or upfront payment.

We are equally honest about what a measure will actually do, because overselling is part of what has damaged trust in this sector. Insulation almost always lowers bills, since loft and cavity-wall insulation are among the most cost-effective measures and cut heat loss immediately. A heat pump lowers carbon emissions, and when it is paired with a well-insulated home and the right tariff it can lower running costs against oil or LPG, while against mains gas the saving depends on tariffs. That is precisely why the Warm Homes Plan is fabric-first, insulating before installing a heat pump is what makes the heat pump efficient and the bills lower. We will tell you where a measure saves money and where the main benefit is comfort and carbon, rather than promising a number we cannot stand behind.

An illustrative example

As an illustrative composite based on a typical Warm Homes Plan route, consider a 1960s semi-detached owner-occupied home in EPC band E, lived in by a family receiving Universal Credit, with an old boiler, no cavity insulation and a draughty single-glazed back room. Under the ECO4 whole-house route, that home could receive cavity wall and loft insulation, a new air source heat pump and smart heating controls as a bundled package, installed under PAS 2035 with TrustMark lodgement at no cost to the family and the fabric work done before the heating. In an illustrative case like this the EPC could move from E up toward C, with the damp resolved once the fabric-first insulation is in. The figures and outcome are illustrative and depend entirely on your property, your eligibility and the live scheme rules at the time you apply.

Not sure which route fits you? Start with the full grants and funding guide, check what you might pay on the cost page, then tell us about your home and we will point you to the right scheme. You can also read the funding FAQs or compare the closing schemes on our ECO4 page and Boiler Upgrade Scheme page.