The BUS Grant: £7,500 Towards Your Heat Pump (Updated for 2026)

In short

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) pays £7,500 towards installing an air source heat pump in your home in England or Wales — and an enhanced £9,000 is expected from July 2026 for homes currently heated by oil or LPG (i.e. off the mains gas grid). You don’t apply for it yourself — we apply on your behalf, and the grant is deducted directly from your quote. The scheme runs until 2030, and recent changes in April 2026 made it easier to qualify, especially for older Reading properties without a recent EPC.

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On this page

• What the BUS grant is, in plain English
• How much you can get
• The £9,000 off-gas uplift (oil and LPG homes)
• Who’s eligible
• How the application works (and why you don’t do it yourself)
• What the £7,500 covers — and what it doesn’t
• BUS vs ECO4, HUG2, and the Warm Homes Plan
• Common questions about the BUS grant
• What this means for homes in Reading

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What the BUS grant is, in plain English

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the UK government’s main grant for switching from a fossil-fuel boiler to a low-carbon heating system. It’s administered by Ofgem on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and it has been running since May 2022. It currently sits within the wider £13.2 billion Warm Homes Plan.

The grant is fixed: it does not scale with the cost of your install, the size of your property, or the type of heat pump (within each technology category). The same £7,500 grant applies whether your install costs £9,000 or £15,000. What changes from home to home is what you pay on top — and that’s what our full cost breakdown covers in detail.

The grant for the standard residential heat pump — an air-to-water air source heat pump, which connects to your existing radiators and hot-water cylinder — is currently £7,500. A smaller grant of £2,500 was added in April 2026 for air-to-air heat pumps, the split-system type that delivers warm or cool air directly into rooms. Most UK homes installing a heat pump are installing the air-to-water version, so when people say “the £7,500 BUS grant” they almost always mean that.

How much you can get

Technology	Grant	What it is
Air-to-water air source heat pump	£7,500	The standard UK residential heat pump — works with radiators and a hot-water cylinder
Air-to-water ASHP — off-gas oil/LPG homes	£9,000	Enhanced grant announced 21 April 2026; expected to open July 2026 and run to 31 March 2027. See the off-gas section below.
Ground source heat pump	£7,500	Uses pipes buried in your garden as the heat source
Water source heat pump	£7,500	Uses a nearby river, lake, or borehole
Air-to-air heat pump	£2,500	Split-system; delivers warm/cool air rather than heating water (new category from April 2026)
Biomass boiler	£5,000	Wood pellet boiler; only for rural off-gas properties with an emissions certificate

A few rules that catch people out:

• One grant per property. If a previous owner of your property has already used a BUS grant, the property isn’t eligible for another one. This is per-property, not per-person.
• You can’t combine grant categories. A property gets one grant for one technology — you can’t claim both £7,500 for an air-to-water heat pump and £2,500 for an air-to-air unit.
• The grant goes to your installer, not to you. You’ll see the £7,500 deducted from your quote and your invoice. You pay the residual; we claim the grant back from Ofgem after the install is commissioned.

The £9,000 off-gas uplift (oil and LPG homes)

On 21 April 2026, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced an enhanced £9,000 BUS grant for homes currently heated by oil or LPG — i.e. homes that aren’t on the mains gas grid. The uplift is £1,500 above the standard £7,500 ASHP grant.

What it is: the same BUS air-to-water ASHP grant, raised by £1,500 for homes whose existing heating system runs on oil or LPG rather than mains gas.

Why it exists: oil and LPG households face higher counter-factual heating costs than mains-gas households (oil and LPG prices have historically been higher and more volatile), and the rural housing stock that runs on these fuels is on average less thermally efficient. Both factors push up the cost of a heat pump retrofit. The £1,500 uplift partially offsets that.

Timeline (as announced):

• Announced: 21 April 2026 by DESNZ.
• Expected open date: July 2026 (the underlying amendment regulations are still to be laid).
• Expected closing date: 31 March 2027.
• Geographic scope: England and Wales, same as the rest of BUS.

What this means for Reading: most properties within Reading itself are connected to the mains gas grid, so the £9,000 uplift won’t apply. The relevant Reading-area properties are largely in West Berkshire and outer-Thatcham villages where oil or LPG is still the primary heat source — Bradfield, Padworth, Chieveley, and the smaller settlements outside the gas-grid footprint. If you live in one of these areas and currently heat with oil or LPG, the uplift is genuinely material — £1,500 off the install cost on what is already a higher-cost retrofit (rural properties often need additional emitter upgrades or larger systems).

Important caveats:

• The £9,000 is announced, not yet open. Until the amendment regulations are laid and in force, only the standard £7,500 grant is available. A homeowner attempting to apply before the open date will be refused.
• All other BUS rules continue to apply — MCS-certified installer, voucher mechanism, one grant per property, etc.
• The 31 March 2027 closing date is a one-year window as announced; we’ll update this page if the regulations extend it.

If you think you qualify and want to wait for the uplift to open before booking your install, talk to us — we’ll help you understand the timing trade-off (heating-bill savings while you wait versus the £1,500 you’d gain on the grant).

Who’s eligible

There are three things that determine eligibility: where your property is, what type of property it is, and what’s heating it now.

Where your property is

The BUS covers England and Wales only. If you’re in Scotland, the equivalent is the Home Energy Scotland Grant + Loan, which offers up to £7,500 grant plus up to £7,500 as an interest-free loan — a different scheme with different rules. Northern Ireland has no equivalent national grant at present.

For Reading homeowners, this is straightforward: you’re in.

What type of property it is

• You must own the property. Owner-occupiers, second-home owners, and private landlords are all eligible. Tenants aren’t — the application has to come through the owner.
• Existing properties are eligible. New-builds that the developer is still constructing aren’t, but once you move into a finished new-build with a fossil-fuel boiler installed, the property becomes eligible.
• Self-builds are eligible if you (or the first owner) built the property using your own labour or a builder you paid directly, and the property has never been owned by a business. You’ll need to show title deeds and construction invoices. Self-builds are eligible for heat pumps only — not biomass boilers.
• Social housing isn’t eligible.
• Listed and conservation-area properties are eligible. After the April 2026 changes (see below), the path is simpler than it used to be — the previous EPC and insulation requirements are no longer a hard bar.

What’s heating it now

You must be replacing a fossil-fuel heating system. The government defines this broadly: gas, oil, LPG, and electric heating all count. You can’t use BUS to replace a heating system that’s already low-carbon — so if you already have a heat pump, you can’t BUS-grant a replacement one.

Hybrid systems (for example, a gas boiler with an air source heat pump bolted onto the same system) aren’t eligible either. The grant is specifically for switching away from fossil fuel, not for augmenting it.

What changed in April 2026

This is worth a moment because it materially changed who can qualify, particularly for owners of older Reading homes:

• EPC requirement removed. Until April 2026, your property needed a valid Energy Performance Certificate less than 10 years old, with no outstanding recommendations for loft or cavity-wall insulation. That requirement is now gone. Where no EPC exists, your installer provides alternative evidence — typically a recent utility bill showing your existing fuel type plus photographs of your current heating system.
• Insulation recommendations no longer a hard bar. Under the old rules, an EPC flagging “install loft insulation” would block your BUS application unless you either did the work or got an exemption. Now the installer assesses adequacy during the survey. Insulation still matters for heat pump performance — a poorly-insulated home will run a heat pump less efficiently — but it’s no longer a regulatory precondition for the grant itself.
• Air-to-air heat pumps were added as a £2,500 category.
• The scheme was extended to 2030, up from the previous 2028 deadline.

If you had been told a few years ago that your property couldn’t qualify for BUS because of EPC or insulation issues, it’s worth re-checking — the rules are not what they were.

How the application works (and why you don’t do it yourself)

The BUS grant is structured so that you, the homeowner, don’t fill in any government paperwork. The application goes through your MCS-certified installer.

Here’s how the process actually runs in practice for a typical Reading install:

1. You contact us for a quote. We assess your property, propose a system, and give you a written quote with the BUS grant already deducted. You see the net figure you’ll actually pay.
2. We confirm eligibility. Before submitting anything to Ofgem, our team verifies that the property qualifies — ownership, what’s being replaced, and so on.
3. We apply for the voucher on your behalf. Through Ofgem’s BUS portal. You consent to the application but don’t fill anything in yourself.
4. Ofgem issues the voucher. Valid for three months for an air-to-water install (six months for ground source). Once issued, the install needs to be commissioned within that window.
5. We complete the installation and commission the system. Our MCS-certified engineers carry out the work to the standards Ofgem requires.
6. We claim the grant back from Ofgem. You pay us the quoted residual — never the full pre-grant amount. The £7,500 flows from Ofgem to us; it never passes through your hands.

The MCS certification piece is non-negotiable. From April 2026, the regulations explicitly tie the definition of “installer” to MCS certification — only MCS-certified installers can apply for BUS vouchers. Our team holds the MCS heat pump certification, and the heat pumps we install are MCS-certified products.

What the £7,500 covers — and what it doesn’t

The grant is fixed at £7,500 regardless of what your specific install needs. That £7,500 applies to your quote total, not to specific line items within it. In practice, the way to think about it is: this is what the government contributes towards making your switch from gas (or oil, or LPG) to a heat pump. Whatever the install costs, £7,500 of it is covered by BUS.

Things that are typically included in an MCS heat pump quote, all sitting within the grant-eligible total:

• The heat pump unit itself
• Installation labour
• Internal pipework and controls
• Commissioning and MCS documentation

Things that may appear on your quote — depending on your property’s specifics — and which the £7,500 grant counts towards:

• Larger radiators if your existing ones are undersized for the heat pump’s lower flow temperature
• A new hot-water cylinder, or upgrading an existing one
• Electrical mains upgrades if your supply isn’t sized for the heat pump

Things the grant does not cover:

• Insulation work to your property (loft, cavity wall, etc.) — sometimes recommended by your surveyor, but not part of the BUS-eligible quote
• Survey or design fees, unless they’re bundled into the installer’s quote
• Routine annual servicing once the system is installed

For a full picture of what a heat pump install typically costs in 2026 — and where the £7,500 grant lands within that — see our breakdown of heat pump costs.

BUS vs ECO4, HUG2, and the Warm Homes Plan

BUS isn’t the only UK heat pump grant — it’s just the most widely accessible one. The key distinction is between technology-targeted schemes (like BUS, which is open to anyone meeting the property and ownership criteria) and income-targeted schemes (which require you to meet a household-income or benefits threshold).

Scheme	Who it’s for	What it pays	How it relates to BUS
BUS	Most owner-occupiers and landlords in England and Wales	£7,500 (air-to-water ASHP)	The default route for most households
ECO4	Lower-income households or those on certain benefits	Variable; can cover full install in some cases	Means-tested; not combinable with BUS for the same heat pump
HUG2	Lower-income households in privately-owned, EPC D–G properties	Variable	Means-tested; delivered by local councils
Warm Homes Plan	The over-arching successor framework (announced 2024)	TBD	BUS sits within this framework; post-2030 structure not yet fixed

In broad terms: if you would qualify for ECO4 or HUG2 (lower income, on benefits, energy-poor household), that’s typically the better route because it can cover a larger share of the install. If you wouldn’t qualify for those, BUS is the route. You can’t double-dip — a property that has received government support for a heat pump under any of these schemes can’t claim a separate BUS grant on top.

For a closer look at the income-targeted schemes, see our guide on other UK heat pump grants beyond BUS.

Common questions about the BUS grant

Do I need to pay the full installation cost upfront and claim the grant back? No. The grant is deducted from your quote before you pay anything. You only ever pay the net amount. We claim the £7,500 back from Ofgem after the install is commissioned.

What if my property already had a BUS grant under a previous owner? The property is then ineligible for a further BUS grant. The rule is one-grant-per-property, not one-grant-per-person.

Do I need a valid EPC to qualify? Not since 28 April 2026. Where you don’t have a current EPC, alternative evidence is accepted — typically a utility bill showing your existing fuel type and photos of your heating system, supplied by us as part of the application.

Does my home need insulation to qualify? Not as a regulatory requirement, not since April 2026. The previous “no outstanding insulation recommendations” rule was removed. Your installer will assess insulation as part of the survey because it affects how well the heat pump will perform, but it’s not a precondition for the grant itself.

What’s the difference between an air-to-water and an air-to-air heat pump? An air-to-water heat pump heats water for your radiators and hot-water cylinder — the standard UK installation. An air-to-air heat pump heats and cools air directly, like a reverse air-conditioning unit. The £7,500 grant applies to air-to-water; air-to-air gets £2,500.

Is there a deadline? The current scheme runs until 2030. Grant amounts and rules can change before then — they were last amended in April 2026 and have changed materially several times since the scheme launched. The £7,500 air-to-water figure has been stable since October 2023.

Can I use the BUS grant alongside finance? Yes. The grant is deducted from your quote total, and the residual can be paid via cash, a green loan, a manufacturer’s 0% finance deal, or any other lending. The grant only excludes you from other government grant schemes for the same heat pump.

Who decides if my property is eligible? Your MCS installer makes the assessment and submits the application. Ofgem then validates it. We do the legwork — you don’t need to make the eligibility judgement yourself.

What this means for homes in Reading

Reading is mostly on the gas grid, with a housing stock that runs from Victorian and Edwardian terraces around the town centre and Caversham to inter-war semis in Tilehurst, Earley, and Whitley, and modern estates in Lower Earley, Woodley, and the western expansion areas. The vast majority of Reading homes are owner-occupied and currently heated by a mains-gas combi or system boiler — which puts them squarely in the BUS-eligible category.

The April 2026 changes are particularly relevant for Reading’s period-property owners. Under the old rules, a Victorian terrace with solid walls and an EPC flagging “install cavity wall insulation” (a recommendation that’s often inapplicable to solid-walled properties anyway) could find its BUS application blocked. With the EPC requirement removed and insulation recommendations no longer acting as a hard bar, these older properties now have a clearer path to the grant — which is welcome, given that period properties are the homes where the £7,500 makes the most visible difference to the total switching cost.

For properties in Caversham’s conservation areas, or for listed buildings anywhere in the Reading area, the heat pump install itself may still need planning input around the location and visual integration of the outdoor unit — that’s a separate question from BUS eligibility. The grant itself is available; the planning side is where most conservation-area complexity sits, and it’s worth resolving early. Our planning-permission guide covers that in detail.

Reading’s median household income sits above the UK average, so means-tested schemes like ECO4 and HUG2 tend to be less widely accessible locally than in some other parts of the country. That makes BUS the dominant route for Reading homeowners — and the case for treating it as the default expectation when budgeting for a heat pump install is strong.

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Related guides

• How to apply for the BUS grant — step by step — the full application process from quote to commissioning, in detail.
• BUS grant eligibility — does your property qualify? — the property-by-property eligibility picture, including listed buildings, off-grid homes, and edge cases.
• How much does a heat pump cost in Reading in 2026? — the full cost picture, with the BUS grant in context.

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Need help with your BUS application?

We handle the entire BUS application process on your behalf — eligibility check, Ofgem submission, voucher tracking, and the post-install claim. You don’t need to fill in any government paperwork.

To start, we’ll arrange a free survey of your property and provide a written quote with the £7,500 grant already deducted. You’ll see the actual figure you’d pay, with no obligation to proceed.

Get a quote | Call us on 0118 [number] | Email [address]

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