The Warm Homes Local Grant is the main government scheme currently offering funded energy improvements to low-income households in England. It launched in April 2025, runs until March 2028, and is delivered through local councils rather than energy suppliers. That delivery model changes how you apply, what you receive, and how quickly things move — and it is also why eligibility and availability can vary depending on where you live.
This article covers who qualifies, what the grant pays for, how the application process works, and what to do if your council is not currently taking applications. If you want to understand the wider grants landscape first, the guide to energy grants available in 2026 gives an overview of all current schemes alongside this one.
What the Warm Homes Local Grant pays for
The grant is split into two separate funding pots, each capped at an average of £15,000 per home. The first covers energy performance improvements: insulation of various types, draught-proofing, double glazing upgrades, solar panels, and battery storage. The second covers low carbon heating: air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, and in some cases high-retention storage heaters. A household can access both pots, giving a combined maximum of up to £30,000 in funded improvements.
The work is aimed at bringing your home’s EPC rating up to at least band C. The council surveys your home, identifies the most appropriate measures, and arranges Trustmark-accredited contractors to carry out the work. You do not choose the contractors yourself, and you do not pay anything toward the cost of the improvements. All payments go directly from the council to the contractors.
What your home actually receives depends on what the survey identifies as the highest-priority improvements. Not every home will receive every measure. An uninsulated cavity wall property on mains gas is likely to be assessed differently from a solid-wall, off-gas home, and the grant does not guarantee any specific improvement — it funds whatever the council survey recommends as appropriate for your property. If your home is already losing heat through a combination of poorly insulated walls, draughts, and an inefficient heating system, it helps to have a clear picture of where the biggest losses are before your survey. The house cold diagnostic is a useful starting point, and the articles on why walls feel cold in winter and how to find hidden draughts cover the two areas most commonly addressed by the grant.
Who qualifies
There are three separate routes to eligibility, and you only need to meet one of them alongside the property requirements.
The first route is location-based. Households in postcodes that fall within income deprivation deciles one and two on the government’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation automatically qualify on income grounds without needing to provide income evidence. Whether your postcode qualifies can be checked through the government’s eligibility checker when you apply.
The second route is benefit-based. If your household currently receives a qualifying means-tested benefit, you are eligible regardless of your postcode. Qualifying benefits include Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, and some others. If you are unsure whether a benefit you receive qualifies, the eligibility checker will confirm this.
The third route is the household income threshold. If your total household income is £36,000 a year or less and you do not receive a qualifying benefit and do not live in an eligible postcode, you can still qualify through this route. Your council will need to verify your income before approving your application.
Alongside one of these three income routes, your property must meet the following conditions: it must be in England, it must have an EPC rating of D, E, F, or G, and it must be your main home. New-build properties that have never been occupied are not eligible. Park homes can qualify if they are a permanent residence and have an energy performance equivalent to EPC band D or below.
Homeowners and private renters
Both homeowners and private renters can apply for the Warm Homes Local Grant, but the process differs for each.
If you own your home, you apply directly through the government’s eligibility checker at gov.uk. Your application is passed to your local council if you qualify, and the council contacts you to arrange the next steps. The process is largely straightforward and does not require your landlord’s involvement, because there is none.
If you are a private renter, your landlord must agree to participate in the application and allow the work to take place. Tenants are never asked to pay toward the cost of improvements. However, the rules for landlords mean that the first eligible home a landlord has upgraded can be fully funded by the grant, but any additional homes they have upgraded after the first require the landlord to contribute 50% of the improvement costs. This means that landlords with larger portfolios have less financial incentive to engage with the scheme for subsequent properties. If you are a private renter and your landlord is unresponsive, your local council may be able to assist in making contact and explaining the scheme. It is also worth noting that minimum energy efficiency standards for private rented properties are expected to require landlords to reach EPC band C by 2030, which may encourage landlords who have not previously engaged with grant funding to act sooner rather than later.
How to apply
The application starts at gov.uk rather than directly with your council. You use the government’s online eligibility checker, which asks for your address, your household income relative to the £36,000 threshold, and the EPC rating the government has on record for your home. If you do not know your EPC rating, you can find it using the government’s EPC register during the application process.
If the checker confirms you are likely eligible, your details are passed to your local council or their appointed delivery partner. Your council should contact you within ten working days to discuss your application and arrange a home survey if you are eligible. The survey is carried out by the council’s own team or a contractor they appoint, and it identifies which improvements are suitable for your property.
Once the survey is complete and improvements are agreed, the council arranges the contractors and the work is scheduled. The timeline from application to completed works varies considerably between councils depending on their caseload and contractor availability. Some households have completed the process within a few months; others have waited longer. Applying as early as possible, keeping documents ready, and responding quickly to council correspondence all help to move things along.
Documents you are likely to need include proof of identity, proof of address, proof of income or benefit receipt depending on which eligibility route applies to you, and evidence of property ownership or tenancy. Having these ready before your council contacts you avoids delays at the verification stage.
What to do if your council is not currently taking applications
More than 97% of eligible councils in England have been allocated Warm Homes Local Grant funding, but not all are taking new applications at the same time. Some councils opened their application processes in mid-2025 and already have a substantial caseload; others are still mobilising their delivery. London paused new applications in early 2026 due to the volume of applications already received, with reopening expected in spring 2026.
If your council is not currently accepting applications, the most useful steps are to ask your council to add you to an interest or waiting list, to check back regularly as application windows often reopen, and to use the postcode tool on the grants and support page to find your council’s website directly. It is also worth checking whether your area falls within a regional combined authority such as Greater Manchester or the West Midlands, as these areas received separate Warm Homes funding allocations and may have their own application routes.
While you are waiting, it is worth checking whether ECO4 has any remaining allocation in your area via your energy supplier. ECO4 is mostly exhausted nationally but some local allocation may still exist, particularly for properties with an EPC of F or G not connected to the gas grid.
How the grant interacts with other schemes
The Warm Homes Local Grant and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme are separate and serve different purposes. The Warm Homes Local Grant is means-tested and focused on households with lower incomes in less efficient homes. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is available to any homeowner regardless of income and provides a £7,500 grant specifically toward heat pump installation. They do not directly overlap in most cases, though it is worth checking with your council whether both could apply to your circumstances if a heat pump is one of the improvements being considered.
The Warm Home Discount, Cold Weather Payments, and Winter Fuel Payment are all separate from the Warm Homes Local Grant and do not affect your eligibility for it. These are bill rebates and payments rather than improvement grants, and you can receive them alongside grant-funded improvements. The full picture of what is available and how each scheme works is covered in the energy grants guide.
What improvements actually make the biggest difference to a cold home
The Warm Homes Local Grant is designed to fund the improvements that will produce the most measurable improvement in your home’s EPC rating. In practice, for most homes in England that qualify, that means loft insulation, cavity wall insulation where the construction allows it, and potentially a heat pump or other low carbon heating measure where the property is suitable.
EPC-focused improvements do not always address every reason a home feels cold. A home with adequate insulation can still feel cold because of draughts that are hard to locate, because the heating system is poorly balanced with some radiators not receiving adequate flow, or because heat is escaping rapidly through a stairwell or open plan layout. These issues are generally not covered by the grant but are often inexpensive to address yourself. Understanding the full picture of what is making your home cold, not just what the EPC records, means you can prioritise both what to pursue through the grant and what to address independently. The complete guide to keeping a UK home warm for cheap covers both sides of that picture.
