UK Home Energy Grants in 2026: Every Scheme That's Actually Open

Correction, 18 September 2026 — and it goes to the headline. This article was published on 20 June 2026 under the title “Every Scheme That’s Actually Open”, and it left out the largest one. ECO4 did not close in March 2026. It runs until 31 December 2026, extended by nine months by S.I. 2026/361, in force 26 March 2026 — three months before this piece was published. The extension had been announced in the government response of 23 January 2026, five months before publication. Every statement here that ECO4 had closed was wrong when it was written, not overtaken by events, and anyone who read this page and stopped looking was turned away from help they could still have had. Two further corrections below: the Boiler Upgrade Scheme runs to 2030 rather than 2028 and no longer requires a valid EPC, and there is a national online service for the Warm Homes: Local Grant. The body has been corrected in place; this note records what it said.

Home energy grants are real, but the landscape is fragmented and it moved sharply in 2026. The Warm Homes Plan has reshaped how fuel-poverty money reaches households, but it is delivered locally and the rules vary by council. The result is a patchwork that is easy to misread, and plenty of sites still describe schemes that have already shut — or, as this one did, write off a scheme that is still running.

ECO4 is the one to act on first, and the reason is the calendar. It is the long-standing obligation on energy suppliers to fund heating and insulation for lower-income households, it covers England, Scotland and Wales, and it ends on 31 December 2026. The date is a deadline for the work being finished, not for applying, so a household starting now has roughly three months. It is not a grant scheme and there is no set amount — Ofgem’s own wording is that “this is not a grant scheme”, suppliers offer different levels of support, and some households are asked to contribute. Nor is eligibility a guarantee: a supplier decides whether to fund a job. The way in is to contact any obligated supplier, not only your own, or to ask your council about ECO4 Flex if you are not on a qualifying benefit.

This is the position as at September 2026: what is open, what each scheme pays, who qualifies, and what has closed. Eligibility for the means-tested routes is often determined locally, so treat the figures below as the national framework and confirm the detail for a specific property with the delivering body.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) — up to £7,500

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the clearest and most generous national grant still open. It pays a fixed £7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump, and applications run until 31 December 2029 — extended from 31 December 2027 by S.I. 2026/390, in force 28 April 2026. Ofgem must refuse to issue a voucher after that date. It is not means-tested: it is available to most homeowners in England and Wales replacing a fossil-fuel heating system, regardless of income.

The grant is claimed by the installer, not the homeowner — the discount comes off the quote, and the installer must be MCS-certified. It used to be the case that the property needed a valid EPC with no outstanding recommendations for loft or cavity wall insulation. That requirement was removed on 28 April 2026 by the same instrument, and it was the single most common reason a straightforward application stalled. Insulation still matters to how well a heat pump performs, and an installer will raise it — but it is no longer a gate on the grant.

The scheme does not cover gas boilers. Its purpose is to shift homes off fossil-fuel heating, so it funds heat pumps (and, in limited cases, biomass boilers in rural off-gas-grid properties).

Full detail, including the insulation prerequisites and how the £7,500 nets against a typical install, is in the Boiler Upgrade Scheme guide.

The Warm Homes Plan — two £16,600 caps for whole-home upgrades

The Warm Homes Plan is the government’s umbrella programme for fuel-poverty and energy-efficiency upgrades, and it is what will absorb much of what ECO4 delivers once ECO4 ends in December. Its consumer route, Warm Homes: Local Grant, runs to two separate cost caps rather than one headline figure: £16,600 per home for energy performance upgrades and £16,600 for low carbon heating, set out in the July 2026 policy guidance. Between them they cover whole-home retrofit — insulation, heating, sometimes solar — for eligible households, and local authorities may average the caps across a project.

The important caveat: this is a cap, not an entitlement, and eligibility is locally determined. The Warm Homes: Local Grant strand is delivered through councils, which set their own criteria within the national framework. Qualification typically rests on a combination of EPC band (lower-rated homes are prioritised), income or means-tested benefits, and whether the property is off the gas grid. Two households on the same street can get different answers.

Delivery is council-led, but there is a national front door: the government service at gov.uk/apply-warm-homes-local-grant checks your address and hands you to the right council. An earlier version of this article said no national portal existed, which was wrong. The Warm Homes Plan guide sets out the four-route structure and how the eligibility checks work.

The Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) — closed 31 March 2026

Correction, 29 July 2026. This article was published on 20 June 2026, when GBIS was described here as open. It was not: the scheme had already closed to new applicants in October 2025 and ended on 31 March 2026. The section below is left as a description of how GBIS worked, with the tense corrected. For insulation funding now, the route in England is the Warm Homes: Local Grant through your local authority; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own schemes.

GBIS was the insulation-focused scheme that ran alongside the wider fuel-poverty programmes, and it had a deliberately broader eligibility route than the income-tested grants. As well as the standard low-income criteria, it opened up to households in lower Council Tax bands (broadly A–D in England) living in homes with an EPC rating of D or below.

That Council Tax band route was what made GBIS relevant to households who would not qualify for the means-tested schemes. It funded measures such as cavity wall and loft insulation — the least glamorous but highest-volume upgrades, and often the cheapest way to cut a heating bill.

The GBIS guide covers the eligibility routes and the measures funded.

ECO Flex — the local-authority discretion route

ECO Flex (formally LA Flex) is not a separate pot of money so much as a mechanism: it lets local authorities widen ECO4 eligibility beyond the standard benefits-based criteria, using local knowledge of which households are in or near fuel poverty. If a household narrowly misses the national means-test, the council’s flexible eligibility statement is the route worth checking. It ends when ECO4 does, on 31 December 2026, and being named in a council’s declaration does not guarantee the work gets done — Ofgem instructs councils to say so.

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) — income, not a grant

The Smart Export Guarantee is not a grant and does not reduce an installation cost, but it belongs on any complete list of what is available, because it changes the economics of solar. Under SEG, licensed electricity suppliers above a certain size must pay households for the solar electricity they export back to the grid.

Rates are set by each supplier and they vary widely and change often, so it is worth comparing tariffs rather than assuming a fixed figure. What matters is the mechanism: a solar installation is no longer a one-way cost. Current tariff comparison and the solar economics sit on the solar panel grants page.

The EV chargepoint grant (OZEV) — up to £350, now targeted

The EV chargepoint grant continues to offer up to £350 towards a home charger, but its scope has narrowed. The general grant for homeowners with off-street parking ended in 2022. What remains is targeted: people who live in flats, and people who rent, can still claim, as can some landlords installing for tenants. For anyone in a flat or a rental, it is a straightforward £350 off.

What has closed

A scheme that has ended is worse than useless if a site still presents it as live, because it sends people chasing money that is not there. The opposite error costs more, and this article made it: writing off a live scheme sends people away from money that is there. As at September 2026:

• ECO4 has not closed — it was listed here in error and runs to 31 December 2026. See the correction at the top.
• The Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) closed to new applicants in October 2025 and ended on 31 March 2026. It was not ECO4’s successor; the two ran alongside each other.
• The Home Upgrade Grant (HUG) has run its course as a distinct programme, with whole-home retrofit folded into Warm Homes.
• The Feed-in Tariff closed to new applicants back in 2019; the Smart Export Guarantee replaced it for solar export payments.

How to work out what a specific home qualifies for

Three pieces of information determine almost every grant decision: the property’s EPC rating (lower bands are prioritised), its Council Tax band (which was the GBIS broad route, and is one of the things a council weighs under ECO4 Flex), and whether anyone in the household receives means-tested benefits. Off-gas-grid status matters too, because those homes are prioritised for heat-pump support.

The reality is that no national calculator can give a guaranteed answer for the locally delivered schemes — the final decision rests with the council or the installer running the eligibility check. The fastest way to narrow it down is to start from a current EPC and the schemes above, then confirm with the delivering body.

Energy Pages is an independent information service, not an installer or a grant administrator. The figures here reflect published government policy as at 18 September 2026 and are kept under review as schemes change. For any specific property, confirm the current position with gov.uk, the relevant local authority, or an MCS-certified installer.

Sources: gov.uk (Boiler Upgrade Scheme, Warm Homes: Local Grant, Warm Homes Plan, Great British Insulation Scheme), Ofgem (Smart Export Guarantee, ECO), legislation.gov.uk (S.I. 2026/361 extending ECO4; S.I. 2026/390 amending the Boiler Upgrade Scheme), the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (chargepoint grant), and the Energy Saving Trust. Scheme positions re-verified against primary sources on 18 September 2026.