The Warm Homes: Local Grant, explained plainly.
Up to £30,000 of fully funded work, delivered by your council rather than applied for nationally. Most of the people who ask me about it do not qualify, and the ones who do should not be paying me. Here is how to tell which you are.
The two questions that decide everything.
The Warm Homes: Local Grant is the main local delivery route for the government’s Warm Homes Plan in England. It runs to March 2028, it is delivered by local councils rather than through a national application, and for eligible households the work is fully funded. You pay nothing.
Two things decide whether it is worth your time reading any further.
Is your household income £36,000 a year or less, and is your EPC rated D, E, F or G?
If the answer to both is yes, you may well qualify, and you should go to your council rather than to me. If the answer to either is no, the grant is not your route and the second half of this article is the useful part.
A few refinements to those two tests. The income figure counts every adult in the household, other than those in full-time education. There are alternative routes in: households in the most deprived postcodes, measured by the first two income deciles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation, can qualify without income verification, and households on certain means-tested benefits can qualify that way instead.
On the property side, homes rated C or above are excluded in all circumstances. It must be your main residence, so second homes and holiday lets are out. Privately rented homes can qualify, but the tenant needs written landlord consent. Council and housing association tenants go through their landlord and a different scheme entirely.
Two pots, not one.
The funding is structured as two separate cost caps, which is what allows a genuine whole-house package rather than a single measure.
| Cost cap | Covers | Up to |
|---|---|---|
| Energy performance | Insulation, solar PV, glazing, ventilation and fabric measures | £15,000 |
| Low carbon heating | Air source and ground source heat pumps | £15,000 |
Caps are per property and are not a promise. A qualifying household in a qualifying property does not guarantee that every measure gets installed. The council surveys the property and approves a package based on what the building actually needs and what represents value against the caps.
The change that opened it up
Earlier schemes such as HUG2 were restricted to homes off the gas grid. The Local Grant is fuel-blind. Mains gas, electricity, oil or LPG, all are eligible. That is the single biggest reason more people qualify now than did two years ago, and it is the part most homeowners have not caught up with.
There was also a rule, until April 2026, requiring your EPC to have no outstanding recommendations for loft or cavity insulation before you could apply. That has been scrapped. If you were turned away on that basis previously, it is worth asking again.
In Shropshire it is called something else.
This trips people up. Searching for the Warm Homes: Local Grant on the council website may not get you far, because locally it is delivered under the banner of Sustainable Warmth Shropshire, a long-running programme that has carried several national schemes over the years.
Shropshire Council was awarded just over £6.7m under the scheme, working in a consortium with Herefordshire Council and Telford and Wrekin. The council has also set local criteria on top of the national ones: properties in council tax bands A to D, with an EPC below band C.
Council tax band A to D is a Shropshire condition, not a national one. If you are in band E or above locally, you are outside the local scheme even if you meet the national income and EPC tests. Neighbouring authorities set their own criteria, so a property a few miles away may be treated differently.
Delivery runs through an independent retrofit coordinator working to PAS 2035, which is the standard that governs how retrofit is assessed, designed and signed off. In practice that means a proper assessment of the whole building rather than a single measure dropped in, and a medium-term improvement plan showing what should happen later. That is a good thing, and it is worth asking to see.
Go to the council, not to me.
I want to be direct about this, because it would be easy for someone in my position to be vague and hope for a fee.
If you qualify for the Warm Homes: Local Grant, the assessment, the design and the work are all funded. You should not be paying an independent consultant for advice you can get as part of a scheme built for exactly this purpose. Contact your council’s housing or energy team, have your postcode, tenure and rough household income ready, and ask specifically about the Warm Homes: Local Grant.
Expect the process to take time. Contact within a couple of weeks of applying is normal, and anywhere from two to six months from survey to completed installation is common, because demand is high.
There is one situation where an independent view still earns its keep.
If you are offered a package and something about it does not sit right, or you are being asked to accept measures you did not expect, a second opinion is cheap next to living with the result. That is a quote review, not a survey, and it takes me an hour or two.
You are the majority, and you have options.
Most people who ask me about grants are over the income threshold, above EPC band C, in a higher council tax band, or in a property that is not their main residence. If that is you, here is the honest landscape.
| Route | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Boiler Upgrade Scheme | No income test at all. £7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump, rising to £9,000 for off gas grid properties replacing fossil fuel until March 2027, and £2,500 for air to air. Applied for by your certified installer, not by you. |
| Zero rate VAT | Solar, battery storage and heat pumps carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027. That is a real discount available to everyone, with no application. |
| The loan scheme | Around £2bn of low and zero interest lending aimed specifically at households who do not qualify for grants. Details expected later in 2026, phased launch from 2027. This is the one to watch if you are in the middle. |
| Doing nothing yet | A legitimate answer. If the loan scheme is a year away and your boiler has five years left in it, waiting may beat borrowing. |
The mistake I see most often
People who do not qualify for the grant assume the answer is to spend nothing, and people who do qualify assume the answer is to accept everything offered. Both are wrong often enough to be worth saying out loud.
The order still matters whether the money is yours or the government’s. Fabric before heat, heat before generation, generation before storage. A funded package that puts a heat pump into an uninsulated house is not a bargain, it is an expensive running cost you did not choose.
Landlords, read this bit twice.
A privately rented property can be improved under the Local Grant, but the application comes from the tenant and needs your written consent. If you have a tenant on a low income in a band D to G property in a participating area, that is fully funded work on your asset, and the deadline pressure is coming from the other direction anyway.
Under the Warm Homes Plan, private rented homes are expected to reach EPC C by 2030. Work funded now is work you are not paying for later, and refusing consent to a tenant application is a decision worth thinking about carefully rather than reflexively.
Someone on your side of the table.
I am a Domestic Energy Assessor and PAS 2035 Retrofit Assessor working across Shropshire and the West Midlands. I do not install anything and I do not sell equipment, so my view on what to do, and in what order, is not tied to a product.
If you qualify for the grant, use it. If you do not, or if you have been offered a package you are unsure about, that is where an independent view is worth paying for.
Home Energy Plan
A full visit and a ranked, costed sequence of works for your property, including the measures worth skipping. From £350, credited in full if I go on to manage the work.
For your homeQuote Review
Been offered a package, by a council scheme or an installer? Up to three proposals reviewed, sizing sense-checked and savings claims tested against your bills. £195.
See what is includedBased on the Warm Homes: Local Grant policy guidance for local authorities, the Warm Homes Plan published January 2026, the list of successful local authorities updated July 2026, and Shropshire Council’s published Sustainable Warmth Shropshire criteria. Local criteria and funding availability change, and councils can pause applications when allocations run out. Always confirm the current position with your own council before making decisions.
Start with a conversation.
Tell me the site, the running costs if you know them, and what has forced the question. Fifteen minutes will usually tell us both whether there is enough here to be worth a survey.