By Closed
Green Homes Grant
Ended 31 March 2021
7,500
BUS heat pump grant
Current replacement, England & Wales
Dec 2026
ECO4 end date
Free insulation if on benefits
30,000
Warm Homes Local Grant
Up to, per home in EPC D,G
Skip Green Homes Grant. Find the live route.
Answer four questions. We tell you which of the six current UK schemes you should be looking at instead.
Routes verified May 2026, Sources: gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme, ofgem.gov.uk, mygov.scot, gov.wales/nest-warm-homes-programme. Best estimate only; the relevant scheme administrator has the final say.
If you came looking for Green Homes Grant
You are not in the wrong place. You are just looking for a dead scheme.
The Green Homes Grant launched in September 2020 with a £2 billion budget and a promise to upgrade 600,000 homes in six months. It closed on 31 March 2021, less than seven months later. By the time it shut, only around 47,500 vouchers had been issued out of a planned 600,000. The National Audit Office later found that fewer than 12% of intended grants reached households and roughly £1.5 billion of the budget was never spent. The work the scheme tried to do is now mostly delivered through the Energy Company Obligation instead.
Most of the articles you find about Green Homes Grant on Google were written in late 2020 and never updated. Some still describe it in the present tense. None of them help you, because the scheme no longer exists. You cannot apply. Vouchers issued before April 2021 expired in March 2022. There is no "Green Homes Grant 2.0" coming back.
What you almost certainly want, if you landed on this page, is to insulate your home, fit a heat pump, or replace a failing boiler with something low-carbon, and to know whether the government will help pay for it. The answer is yes, through six separate energy-efficiency schemes (one per nation, plus three England-wide). The rest of this page tells you which one fits, why the old scheme failed, and what the new schemes do differently.
The current routes
What replaced the Green Homes Grant in 2026
Six schemes split the work the Green Homes Grant tried to do alone. Match yourself to one of them.
| Scheme | What it funds | Amount | Eligibility | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) | Heat pumps; biomass in eligible off-gas homes | £7,500 ASHP / £7,500 GSHP / £2,500 air-to-air / £5,000 biomass | England and Wales; MCS installer; valid EPC | Live |
| ECO4 | Multi-measure insulation and heating for fuel-poor homes | Free measures, no cap | Means-tested benefits OR LA Flex referral | Live to 31 Dec 2026 |
| Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) | Single insulation measure (loft, cavity wall, etc.) | Free or part-subsidised | EPC D-G, lower council tax bands; OR low income | Live to 31 Mar 2026 |
| Warm Homes: Local Grant | Insulation and low-carbon heating, off-gas-grid focus | Up to ~£30,000 per home | Low-income (<£36,000 household income) in EPC D-G | Live from Apr 2025 |
| Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan | Heat pumps, insulation, heat networks (Scotland) | Up to £7,500 grant + £7,500 loan; £1,500 rural uplift | Scottish homeowners; rural/island uplift available | Live |
| Warm Homes Nest (Wales) | Fully funded energy-efficiency improvements | No cost (means-tested) | Low income + means-tested benefit OR vulnerable condition + EPC D-G | Live |
| Home Upgrade Grant (HUG2) | Replaced by Warm Homes Local Grant | , | , | Closed 31 Mar 2025 |
| Green Homes Grant | Voucher-based insulation and low-carbon heating | £5,000 / £10,000 (low-income) | England, homeowners and landlords | Closed 31 Mar 2021 |
Why this scheme still dominates search
Why most of the internet still talks about a dead scheme
If the Green Homes Grant has been closed for five years, why is it still all over Google?
SEO inertia
Pages written in 2020 built up backlinks and search-engine authority before the scheme closed. They keep ranking for "home energy grant" because there is no equivalent single-name replacement. Six smaller schemes do not rank as well as one big one.
It is a useful case study
Policy analysts, journalists and energy-efficiency consultants keep citing the Green Homes Grant because the National Audit Office report is genuinely interesting. It is the canonical example of how good intentions plus bad delivery design destroy a £2 billion programme in six months.
The replacements are fragmented
There are now six schemes covering what one used to. Each is technically narrower and easier to deliver, but harder to summarise. Most readers cannot tell the difference between ECO4 and GBIS without help, so they default to searching for the scheme they vaguely remember from the news.
Expert analysis
Why the Green Homes Grant failed (the NAO findings)
The scheme did not fail because of bad intentions. It failed because the delivery design was incompatible with the timescale.
When the National Audit Office reviewed the scheme in 2021, it identified four structural problems that together stopped most vouchers from reaching homes:
- A six-month delivery window. The original deadline gave installers six months to design, train staff for and deliver a programme of work that the industry had never run at that scale before. Most installers had no time to scale up. By the time training and TrustMark certification were in place, the deadline had moved twice and confidence had collapsed;
- A paid third-party administrator bottleneck. Application handling was outsourced to an administrator (ICF) on a fee-per-voucher basis. The administrator was under-resourced for the volume. Households waited weeks for vouchers; installers waited months for payment;
- TrustMark certification at the wrong scale. Every installer had to be TrustMark-registered for the relevant measure. The pool of TrustMark-registered installers was tiny relative to demand. Many qualified installers walked away rather than pay registration fees for a scheme that might not last;
- Voucher-to-payment lag. Installers carried the cash-flow risk until vouchers were redeemed, which took weeks or months. Smaller installers could not afford the working-capital gap and stopped quoting on Green Homes Grant work altogether.
In plain language: the scheme was designed as if delivery capacity already existed at the scale the budget assumed. It did not. The deadline made it impossible to build that capacity in time. The administrator could not process the demand. Installers withdrew. Households were left with vouchers they could not use.
What the replacement schemes do differently
If the Green Homes Grant is the case study, the schemes that replaced it are the response. The structural differences are deliberate.
Green Homes Grant (what broke)
- Six-month delivery window;
- Paid third-party administrator handling vouchers;
- TrustMark certification at a scale the installer base could not meet;
- Voucher-to-payment lag punished small installers;
- Single big-bang scheme covering insulation, heat pumps and windows together.
What the replacements do
- Multi-year timeframes (ECO4 runs ~4 years, BUS runs to 2028 minimum);
- MCS certification (heat pumps) instead of TrustMark, already used by 5,000+ installers;
- Supplier-delivered (ECO, GBIS) so the supplier carries cash-flow, not the installer;
- For BUS, the grant is netted off the quote upfront, the homeowner never sees a voucher;
- Measures split across schemes so each scheme has a narrower, deliverable scope.
In detail
The three main routes in England, in detail
Most readers fall into one of these three buckets.
If you want a heat pump
Route: Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS). £7,500 off an air-source or ground-source heat pump, £2,500 off an air-to-air heat pump, £5,000 off a biomass boiler in eligible off-gas-grid homes. Income-neutral, England and Wales.
Your MCS-certified installer applies on your behalf and deducts the grant from your quote. You never see a voucher. You do need a valid EPC, with no outstanding loft or cavity-wall recommendations (these are very cheap to fix if needed).
If you want insulation and you are on benefits
Route: ECO4 or GBIS. ECO4 is the bigger of the two, a multi-measure package (insulation plus heating) at no cost, delivered by your energy supplier. GBIS is single-measure (loft, cavity wall, or internal solid wall) but easier to qualify for.
You contact your energy supplier, not the government. Most participating suppliers have an online check; smaller suppliers may sub-contract delivery to a partner like E.ON or British Gas. Local Authority Flex referrals can also unlock ECO4 even if you do not technically receive benefits.
If you live off the gas grid on a low income
Route: Warm Homes Local Grant. Replaced HUG2 in April 2025. Delivered by your local authority. Up to ~£30,000 per home for insulation plus low-carbon heating in rural and off-gas-grid properties where ECO4 is harder to deliver.
Household income cap of ~£36,000. EPC D-G. Apply through your local council, not a national portal. If your council is not currently delivering it, escalate via your MP; the funding pot is real, the bottleneck is council uptake.
Cross-subsidy versus Treasury grants: where UK policy is going
There are two ways to pay for home energy efficiency at scale: cross-subsidy through bills (ECO, GBIS) or direct grants from the Treasury (BUS, Warm Homes Local Grant, Warm Homes Plan). The UK is mid-transition between the two models, and that matters for what you can apply for now versus in 2027.
- ▸Cross-subsidy (ECO4, GBIS) is funded by every bill-payer paying a few pounds a year. It is invisible, but it is regressive: low users pay proportionally more. ECO4 ends 31 December 2026, GBIS ends 31 March 2026.
- ▸Treasury grants (BUS, Warm Homes Plan) come from general taxation. The Warm Homes Plan has ~£15 billion of capital committed across this Parliament, replacing most of what ECO has historically done.
- ▸From 2027 onwards the model is mostly grants. If you are eligible for ECO4 now and have not used it, do not wait: the obligation expires and the replacement structure will be more targeted to the lowest-income households.
The structural lesson from Green Homes Grant: schemes that pay through the supplier (ECO, GBIS) deliver. Schemes that try to pay through a paid third-party administrator and a voucher pipeline do not. BUS is the exception because it nets the grant against the installer's invoice, not a voucher.
What to do, by situation
What to actually do, depending on your situation
Six common starting points. Pick the one closest to yours.
You want a heat pump (England or Wales)
Get three MCS-certified installer quotes through mcscertified.com. The BUS grant of £7,500 is netted off the quote before VAT. Total typical cost: £6,000 to £10,000 after grant, before any export earnings from a hybrid solar setup.
You want insulation and you are on means-tested benefits
Contact your energy supplier and ask for an ECO4 assessment. If you are not on benefits but have a long-term illness or live in a fuel-poor area, ask your local authority about the Local Authority Flex route, it can unlock ECO4 without you being on benefits.
You want insulation and you are not on benefits
Check GBIS eligibility (EPC D-G, lower council tax band) through your energy supplier. GBIS pays for one measure, normally loft or cavity wall insulation. Apply before 31 March 2026.
You live in Scotland
Call Home Energy Scotland on 0808 808 2282 (Mon-Fri 8am-8pm, Sat 9am-5pm). They run the unified front door to the Grant and Loan plus Warmer Homes Scotland, they will route you, not the other way round.
You live in Wales
Call Warm Homes Nest on 0808 808 2244 (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm) or apply at gov.wales/nest-warm-homes-programme. If you do not qualify for Nest, BUS still covers Wales for heat pumps.
You live in Northern Ireland
Call NI Energy Advice on 0800 111 4455 (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm). The two main routes are Affordable Warmth (income-based, delivered through your local council) and the NI Sustainable Energy Programme (NISEP) for energy-efficiency measures.
Other UK energy and fuel-poverty schemes worth knowing about
If you qualify for one of the above, you likely qualify for several of these too. Don't leave money on the table.
| Scheme | What it pays | How to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Warm Home Discount | £150 winter electricity-bill rebate | Automatic if on qualifying benefits and with a participating supplier on 24 August |
| Cold Weather Payment | £25 per qualifying 7-day cold snap (Nov-Mar) | Automatic if on Pension Credit, UC or other qualifying benefit |
| Winter Fuel Payment | £200 or £300 (over 80) | Universal for pensioners; reclaimed by HMRC over £35,000 income |
| Pension Credit | Tops weekly income up to £238 (single) / £363.25 (couple) | Apply via gov.uk/pension-credit; gateway to most other schemes |
| Priority Services Register | Free practical support (large print, advance outage notice, etc.) | Apply through your supplier and your network operator |
Green Homes Grant, frequently asked questions
Bottom line
The Green Homes Grant failed. The replacements actually work.
If you came here looking for the Green Homes Grant, you are five years too late, and a generation of policy designers learned an expensive lesson on your behalf. The schemes that replaced it are smaller, narrower and far less photogenic, but they deliver: BUS netted off the installer's quote means there is no voucher to lose; ECO4 and GBIS delivered through suppliers means the supplier (not a small installer) carries the cash-flow risk; Warm Homes: Local Grant delivered through councils means the decision-maker is local and accountable.
The bigger picture: if you are applying for an insulation or heat-pump grant in 2026, you are benefiting from the policy reset triggered by a £1.5 billion failure. The current schemes are not just a replacement, they are a deliberate response to what went wrong. They will not all be around forever (GBIS ends March 2026, ECO4 ends December 2026), so the practical advice is: if you qualify, apply now, not next year.
Not sure which scheme fits your home?
Compare suppliers, your supplier is also your route into ECO4 and GBIS, so picking the right one matters.
More UK energy scheme guides
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