Boiler Upgrade Scheme & Warm Homes Grant

Grant schemes in this space change often enough that it’s genuinely easy to miss what you’re entitled to. Here’s where things stand right now, as of mid-2026.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS)

This is the most straightforward grant available, and the one most landlords should check first.

Key points landlords often miss:

• It’s not income-tested. Any property owner in England or Wales with a fossil-fuel heating system can apply — this includes landlords applying for a rental property they own, not just owner-occupiers.
• The eligibility bar was lowered in 2026. You no longer need an EPC with insulation recommendations attached to qualify — a change that opened the scheme to a meaningfully wider group of properties than before.
• The grant is applied at the point of installation. Your installer (who must be MCS-certified) handles the paperwork and applies the discount directly — you’re not out of pocket for the grant amount upfront.
• It’s funded through to 2029/30, so there’s no immediate rush driven by the scheme itself — though that doesn’t change the 2030 compliance deadline sitting underneath it.

The Warm Homes Local Grant

This is a larger grant — up to £30,000 per household — but it’s specifically aimed at low-income households and delivered through local councils in England, rather than being universally available the way BUS is.

For landlords, this is worth checking rather than assuming either way: eligibility tends to be assessed around household circumstances (commonly the occupant’s income and the property’s EPC band), so whether a specific let qualifies depends on the actual tenant’s situation, not just the landlord’s. It’s not a grant to assume you’ll get, but it’s also not one to dismiss without checking — particularly for properties currently rated D, E, F or G with tenants on lower incomes.

What’s wound down — don’t chase these

Worth knowing what’s no longer live, so you’re not wasting time on outdated advice found elsewhere online:

• The Great British Insulation Scheme closed on 31 March 2026.
• ECO4 is still running but is being phased out, with an end date of 31 December 2026 — mainly relevant for low-income owner-occupiers rather than landlords, though private tenants can sometimes qualify with landlord permission.

The honest bit

None of these grants alone is likely to cover a full compliance upgrade — BUS covers a meaningful chunk of a heat pump install, not the whole job, and the Warm Homes Local Grant depends on circumstances you don’t control. The right move is checking which (if any) genuinely apply to a specific property, rather than assuming a grant will make this free, or assuming none of it applies to you at all.