Warm Homes: Local Grant 2026: Who Qualifies

Warm Homes: Local Grant at a Glance

The scheme has £500 million over 3 years and 1 job: upgrade the worst-rated private homes of low-income households in England. If you only read one section, read this table. It's built from the GOV.UK application page and the July 2026 policy guidance.

"Warm home grant" and "warm home scheme" searches often mean something else. If you're on Pension Credit, Universal Credit or another qualifying benefit and expecting money off your electricity bill, that's the £150 Warm Home Discount, which is usually automatic; see our Warm Home Discount guide. The Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026 also announced a separate £100 Household Energy Payment for homes in Council Tax bands A to D in England, paid from January 2027, according to the DESNZ Budget explainer (opens in a new tab). Neither of those is the Warm Homes: Local Grant, and you can get all three.

For the wider picture of free insulation and heating schemes in Great Britain, including the supplier-funded scheme that closes on 31 December 2026, start with our ECO4 scheme guide. This page goes deeper on the council grant only.

Who Qualifies: The 3 Income Pathways and the Property Rules

You need to pass 2 tests: one about the home and one about the household's income. The DESNZ policy guidance (opens in a new tab) says a household only has to meet 1 of the 3 income pathways, but every pathway still needs proof of the EPC rating, ownership, residence and identity.

The home. It must be an existing home in England with an EPC energy efficiency rating of D to G, which the guidance defines as a SAP score of 68 or below. Homes rated A to C are ineligible "in all circumstances". New builds and self-builds that haven't been lived in are out. Park homes can qualify if they're your permanent home, are assessed as equivalent to D to G, and won't be removed during the guarantee period. Social housing is excluded, apart from limited "infill" in blocks or terraces. You can look up your rating on the GOV.UK energy certificate register (opens in a new tab); GOV.UK says you can also find it out when you apply.

The household: pick whichever pathway fits.

Source: DESNZ, Warm Homes: Local Grant policy guidance for local authorities, updated June 2026, Table 4 and sections 4.2 to 4.4.

Two details trip people up. First, Child Benefit isn't on the pathway 2 list, even though it counts for ECO4. A family on Child Benefit alone will usually need pathway 1 or 3. Second, the guidance says the income of adults in full-time education doesn't count, and disability benefits that pay for extra costs (Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment and four others) are left out of the income sum. Rent you get from a lodger does count.

Over £36,000? Check the after housing costs table. Larger households can qualify on income left after tax and rent or mortgage payments. These are some of the thresholds in Tables 6 and 7 of the guidance:

Source: DESNZ WH:LG policy guidance, June 2026, Tables 6 and 7. Housing costs mean rent or mortgage only, not council tax, energy bills or ground rent.

If you own a D to G rated home in England and someone in the household gets one of the listed benefits, this grant is your best bet for free upgrades in 2026: no income check, no contribution and no end date before March 2028.

Who shouldn't count on it:

• Anyone outside England. GOV.UK sends Scottish readers to Home Energy Scotland (opens in a new tab), Welsh readers to the Welsh Government's Nest scheme (opens in a new tab), and Northern Ireland readers to NI Direct's energy saving grants (opens in a new tab).
• Owners of B or C rated homes, whatever their income.
• Households with large savings or assets. The guidance lets councils refuse a home if they don't think it's in or at risk of fuel poverty, even when income is under £36,000. Self-declaring your income isn't accepted; councils must check evidence.
• Social housing tenants. Your landlord may get help through the separate Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund instead.

What It Pays For, and What It Won't

According to the policy guidance, any measure recognised in the Reduced Data SAP (the EPC calculation) is eligible "except for fossil fuel heating". In practice, councils choose from 2 lists, each with its own spending cap of £16,600 per home, raised from £15,000 in the July 2026 update.

Source: DESNZ WH:LG policy guidance, June 2026, sections 6 and 7. The caps are averages across a council's whole project, so one home can get more and another less.

No gas boilers, ever. The guidance is blunt: "new gas boilers cannot be funded". Even in a hybrid system, if a new gas boiler is needed, only the heat pump component gets grant money, and all-in-one "compact" hybrids aren't allowed because they contain a new boiler. If your boiler has broken and you want a like-for-like replacement, this isn't the grant; our boiler grants UK guide covers the routes that can help. A heat pump outside this scheme is better funded through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, though the guidance bans using both on the same measure.

Windows are possible but rare. Glazing sits on the eligible list, and DESNZ's Table 2 shows 216 double or triple glazing measures by the end of July 2026, at an average cost of £6,800. The Greater Manchester page says glazing and doors are "only recommended in rare cases". For the full picture on windows, see our window grants UK guide.

You don't pick the measures. A retrofit assessment does. The guidance sets a non-binding aim of reaching EPC band C, so the assessor will usually recommend insulation and controls before anything else. If you'd like something the assessor didn't recommend, the guidance lets owner-occupiers pay for it themselves, but nobody can make you.

Grantsights Analysis of the Warm Homes: Local Grant: Where the £483 Million Went

The money isn't shared out evenly: the 5 largest projects hold 47% of all funding. Grantsights analysis of 73 allocations worth a combined £483,269,129 comes from the DESNZ list Warm Homes: Local Grant: successful local authorities (opens in a new tab), updated July 2026 to add first-year top-ups. Counting consortium members, those 73 lead councils or bodies cover 277 named authorities.

Source: Grantsights analysis of 73 allocations in the DESNZ list "Warm Homes: Local Grant: successful local authorities", updated July 2026, downloaded October 30, 2026. The median project got £3.02 million; the smallest was Newcastle upon Tyne at £290,551.

The 5 biggest are all consortia, and if your council is a member, the lead body may run the scheme on its behalf:

One official source disagrees with another. The tables published with the August 2026 statistics carry their own grant recipient list: 74 projects, including Tonbridge and Malling (£1.5 million), totalling £465.3 million, with different figures for 28 projects. Blackpool shows £30.0 million there, Portsmouth £26.0 million and Newcastle upon Tyne £2.29 million. The GOV.UK list says it was updated in July 2026 to reflect extra funding, so Grantsights leads with it, but treat any single council's figure as approximate. DESNZ itself describes the scheme as 74 projects and 271 councils.

Spending is slow so far. DESNZ Table 2 puts the average reported cost at £6,300 per measure. Multiplied across 11,247 measures, that's roughly £71 million of reported work, or about 15% of the money allocated, halfway through the 3-year window. Some of the gap is reporting lag: DESNZ says TrustMark had around 14,700 WH:LG measures in about 6,700 homes lodged by the end of July 2026. Even so, most councils still have funding to spend, which is good news if you apply now.

Where Homes Have Been Upgraded So Far

The South East leads with 1,260 upgraded homes, 23% of the national total. DESNZ's Table 3 shows how the 5,469 homes upgraded by the end of July 2026 split by region.

Source: DESNZ, Warm Homes: Local Grant statistics, August 2026, Table 3 (England, April 2025 to July 2026, 67 of 74 projects reporting). Provisional.

Two patterns matter for applicants. In the South West, 41% of upgraded homes got low carbon heating, the highest rate, which fits a region with many homes off the gas grid. In Yorkshire and the North East, fewer than 1 in 10 did, and homes got the fewest measures each, so expect a smaller package of insulation and solar rather than a heat pump.

The calendar matters too. DESNZ Table 1 shows 1,504 homes had their first measure fitted in March 2026 alone, 27.5% of everything delivered in 16 months, as councils finished their first-year budgets. The monthly figures since then (413 homes in April, 106 in July) will rise as late returns arrive, but the March spike suggests jobs bunch up before each 31 March year end. If you apply in autumn, a spring installation is a realistic expectation.

The Postcode Shortcut, and the 17 Councils That Run It Differently

Pathway 1 is the quickest route because no one checks your income. The February 2026 eligible postcodes workbook, published with the DESNZ guidance for local authorities (opens in a new tab), lists 254,014 postcodes in 6,751 neighbourhoods, based on the October 2025 update of the English Indices of Deprivation. For homes newly checked from April 2026 onward, the 2025 list applies.

Grantsights analysis of all 254,014 postcodes in that workbook, grouped by the council named in each neighbourhood, shows where eligible postcodes cluster:

Source: DESNZ, WH:LG eligible postcodes (updated February 2026); allocations from the July 2026 successful local authorities list. Both downloaded October 30, 2026.

For example, Bradford received £6.3 million for an area with 6,321 eligible postcodes, while Sheffield, with 3,918, got £4.0 million. Three of the top six areas sit outside the national scheme. The policy guidance says Greater Manchester and the West Midlands received their WH:LG money through "integrated settlements", so Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, Wolverhampton and the 10 Greater Manchester councils (Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan) can't take part in the national version. If you live there, go through the combined authority. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority's WH:LG page (opens in a new tab) runs its own retrofit portal, and it adds a rule the national scheme doesn't have: private landlords must support the Greater Manchester Good Landlord Charter. Its page still shows caps of £15,000, the pre-July figure.

How to Apply, Step by Step

The process has 6 steps, and the first 2 take minutes. GOV.UK's helpline (0800 098 7950) is open Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and Saturday, 9am to 12pm, if you'd rather not use the online form.

1. Check your EPC. Look it up on the GOV.UK register (opens in a new tab). An old certificate still counts as a starting point; the council's assessor will re-measure.
2. Apply through GOV.UK or your council. The GOV.UK start page (opens in a new tab) asks about your country, home and income, then passes you to your council. Some councils and consortia, like Greater Manchester, also take applications directly. Find yours through GOV.UK's council finder (opens in a new tab).
3. Expect a call or email within about 10 working days. That's the GOV.UK estimate for first contact, not for the work itself.
4. Send evidence. Proof of ownership, address and identity for everyone; benefit award letters or payslips for pathways 2 and 3. Self-declaration isn't accepted.
5. Home survey and retrofit assessment. An assessor works out which upgrades will help most, within the cost caps. Ask for the recommendation in writing.
6. Installation and sign-off. Installers must be TrustMark registered and certified under PAS 2030 or, for heat pumps and solar, by MCS. After the work, a new EPC is produced.

Realistic timing. No official page publishes an average time from application to installation. The first contact is fast; the rest depends on your council's queue, its installers and the season. DESNZ's monthly figures suggest many councils fit most homes in late winter and spring.

When your council has run out. The guidance lets councils choose "first come first served" or another fair way of prioritising when demand outstrips funding, and DESNZ doesn't set the method. If you're told there's a waiting list, ask how it's ordered and whether a new financial year (from April) brings more money.

Landlords and Private Tenants: The One-Free-Home Rule

Private rented homes qualify, but the landlord pays more than anyone else. According to the policy guidance, each landlord gets one home fully funded across the whole scheme, nationally, not per council. For the second and every later home, the landlord must contribute 50%.

Source: DESNZ WH:LG policy guidance, June 2026, Table 9. Landlords can contribute more than 50% if they want to.

The tenant's household is the one that has to pass the income test, and tenants never pay. Other conditions catch landlords out:

• F and G rated lets need a registered exemption. Because it's already illegal to let most F and G homes, the grant can't be used to bring them up to the legal minimum. See the GOV.UK landlord guidance on minimum energy efficiency standards (opens in a new tab).
• No rent rise because of the upgrades. Landlords sign a declaration that they don't intend to raise rent as a direct result of the funded work.
• A subsidy limit. The work counts as a subsidy, and a landlord can't go over £315,000 of Minimal Financial Assistance from all public sources across 3 years.
• A central database. DESNZ checks title deeds to make sure the free home hasn't already been used with another council's project.

A common mistake for tenants is waiting for the landlord to start. You can apply yourself, but nothing happens without the landlord's agreement, so raise it with them early.

What GOV.UK Doesn't Tell You About the Warm Homes: Local Grant

The GOV.UK page is short and accurate. The detail that decides real cases sits in a 59-page guidance document written for councils.

Your council can say no even if you qualify. The guidance gives councils the right not to treat a home if the household doesn't look like it's in, or at risk of, fuel poverty, citing high savings or large asset values. Eligibility is a minimum, not a promise.

Benefit lists differ between schemes. Child Benefit gets you into ECO4 but not into this grant. If a website lumps the two together, it's probably copying ECO4's list.

Having had ECO4 work isn't a bar. The guidance says homes upgraded under ECO can be treated again, as long as the same measure isn't funded twice and any ECO4 job happens wholly before or after the WH:LG work. Homes helped by the older Home Upgrade Grant or Local Authority Delivery scheme face a tougher test: the new work must take them to EPC C or include low carbon heating.

The scheme may change shape before it ends. The Warm Homes Plan (opens in a new tab) commits £4.4 billion to low-income home grants across 5 years and says that "from 2027/28 onwards" the government intends to merge this grant with the social housing fund into a single, more area-based low-income scheme. The plan promised more detail in spring 2026; Grantsights couldn't find that detail on GOV.UK on October 30, 2026. Don't assume today's rules will apply to an application made in 2027.

Price limits are secret. For external and internal wall insulation, glazing, park home insulation and solar thermal, DESNZ sets average price limits that councils must meet, but the guidance says they're shared only under a non-disclosure agreement. That's one reason councils are cautious about offering expensive wall insulation.

Scams and Cold Callers: How to Check a "Warm Homes" Offer

Since 28 October 2026, a real government-backed "Warm Homes" product has been advertised that isn't a grant: the Warm Homes Loan Scheme (opens in a new tab), a loan from a bank or other lender that you repay. GOV.UK says people on a low income might be able to get free improvements through the Warm Homes: Local Grant instead. Expect sales pitches to blur the two.

Councils can contact you first. The guidance encourages them to find eligible homes using council tax reduction records and local charities, so a letter or call isn't automatically fake. These checks help:

• Never pay to "secure" the grant. The guidance says homeowners must not be required to contribute. A request for an upfront fee, deposit or "admin charge" from a homeowner is a red flag.
• Call the council yourself. Use the number on your council's website, found through GOV.UK's council finder (opens in a new tab), not one the caller gives you.
• Check the installer. Look them up on TrustMark (opens in a new tab) and, for heat pumps or solar, the MCS installer search (opens in a new tab).
• Don't share bank details or passwords. Citizens Advice (opens in a new tab) warns that scammers pose as energy companies and government departments to get personal information, and says not to use contact details or links they send.
• Report it. Citizens Advice's scam checker page (opens in a new tab) explains how to report a scam. If someone is pushing you to hand over money or details by phone, hang up and call 159 to reach your bank safely.

If the Grant Isn't Right for You

If you don't qualify, or your council has a waiting list, these are the official alternatives. Each has different rules, so check the one that fits.

• Heating help without income limits: the Boiler Upgrade Scheme gives a grant towards a heat pump in England and Wales; see our Boiler Upgrade Scheme guide.
• Supplier-funded upgrades before 31 December 2026: ECO4 covers Scotland and Wales as well as England, and accepts Child Benefit. Our ECO4 scheme guide explains how to ask before it closes.
• Solar for everyone else: 0% VAT, export payments and the Warm Homes loan are covered in our solar panel grants UK guide.
• Adaptations for disability: a level-access shower or stairlift comes from a different council grant; see our disabled facilities grant guide.

Sources Checked

All sources were read or downloaded on October 30, 2026:

• GOV.UK, Apply for the Warm Homes: Local Grant to improve a home (opens in a new tab)
• DESNZ, Warm Homes: Local Grant: guidance for local authorities (opens in a new tab) and policy guidance PDF (updated June 2026, published July 2, 2026), including the eligible postcodes workbook (updated February 2026)
• DESNZ, Warm Homes: Local Grant: successful local authorities (opens in a new tab) (updated July 2026) and budget allocation (opens in a new tab) (November 2024)
• DESNZ, Warm Homes: Local Grant statistics, August 2026 (opens in a new tab), Tables 1 to 3, grant recipient list and commentary
• DESNZ, Warm Homes Plan (opens in a new tab) (January 21, 2026, corrected March 18, 2026)
• GOV.UK, Warm Homes Loan Scheme (opens in a new tab) (October 28, 2026) and DESNZ, What the Autumn Budget 2026 means for your energy bills (opens in a new tab) (October 28, 2026)
• Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Warm Homes: Local Grant GM Wide Scheme (opens in a new tab)
• Citizens Advice, Grants and benefits to help you pay your energy bills (opens in a new tab) and Check if something might be a scam (opens in a new tab)