This is the largest grant England has ever offered a household for a single heating appliance. It targets one kind of home: the off-grid village property with a tank in the garden. If that's yours, a professionally installed heat pump now costs about as much as a boiler repair. This guide covers the rules. The installation itself — tank removal included — lives on our oil boiler replacement page.
What Exactly Was Announced?
In April 2026 the government announced a temporary uplift to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme: vouchers for homes heated by oil or LPG rise from £7,500 to £9,000 for air source and ground source heat pumps, applying to voucher applications from 21 July 2026, expected to run until 31 March 2027.
Gas-heated homes stay at £7,500; the £2,500 air-to-air rate is unchanged. Everything else about the scheme — installer-led applications, EPC conditions, full replacement of the old system — carries over untouched.
Who Qualifies for the £9,000 Rate?
You qualify if you own a home in England or Wales, its main heating runs on oil or LPG, your EPC has no outstanding loft or cavity wall recommendations, and an MCS-certified installer fully replaces the old system. There is no income or benefits test. The conditions in full:
| Condition | What counts |
|---|---|
| Current heating fuel | An oil or LPG boiler (or LPG warm-air unit) as the property's main heating |
| Ownership | Owner-occupiers, landlords, second homes — no income or benefits test |
| Location | England or Wales |
| EPC | Valid certificate, no outstanding loft or cavity wall recommendations |
| Replacement | Heat pump fully replaces the oil/LPG system — boiler out, tank decommissioned |
| Installer | MCS-certified, who applies for the voucher on your behalf |
The notable absentee is any means test. This is not a benefits scheme — it's an infrastructure push, and a household with a large house and a larger oil tank qualifies exactly as readily as anyone else. If your EPC does flag loft or cavity insulation, clearing it is usually a few hundred pounds and a re-assessment, then the grant is back on the table.
Why Does the Uplift Exist — and Why Rural Bucks?
Oil and LPG are the most carbon-intensive and most price-volatile ways left to heat an English home, and the roughly 1.7 million households using them sit in exactly the villages the gas grid never reached. These homes save the most carbon and money per conversion, so the government pays the most to convert them.
North Buckinghamshire is textbook territory: the villages around Aylesbury Vale, Winslow, Waddesdon, the Claydons, the Brill ridge and the hamlets between Buckingham and the county edge run heavily on tank fuel — and the push lasts only while the funding window is open. For once, living past the end of the gas main is the advantage.
The payback arithmetic explains the targeting. Take a 4-bed village house converting at £12,300 gross: after the uplift it costs £3,300, and against oil it saves roughly £400–£600 a year on a heat pump tariff — payback in six to eight years on fuel alone, before counting the boiler replacement it avoided. The same house on LPG saves £1,000+ a year and pays back in about three. For landlords with oil-heated village lets, the sums stack further: the grant applies to rental property, and the EPC improvement from a heat pump helps meet tightening letting standards.
How Do I Claim It, Step by Step?
You don't claim it yourself — the scheme is installer-led. Book a survey, accept a fixed quote, and we apply to Ofgem for your voucher; you confirm consent by one email. The £9,000 is deducted from your invoice and we redeem it after commissioning. In detail:
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Survey now
A free heat loss survey confirms your eligibility, your system design and your fixed price. Doing this before 21 July costs nothing and loses nothing.
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Application on day one
When the window opens we submit your voucher application to Ofgem. You confirm consent by email once — that's your whole paperwork burden.
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Voucher & install
Ofgem issues the voucher (typically days), valid three months. We install over two to three days, decommission the boiler and tank, and commission the system.
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£9,000 off your invoice
You pay the net figure only. We redeem the voucher after commissioning and hand over your MCS certificate, warranty and building-control paperwork.
What the net figure looks like in practice: typical oil conversions run £10,000–£14,000 gross, so most households pay £1,000–£5,000 — worked examples by property type are in our cost guide, and the year-by-year savings against oil and LPG are in the running costs guide.
£9,000 Grant Questions
My boiler is dying now — do I gamble on it lasting until July?
Get surveyed immediately, then decide with real numbers. If the boiler limps on, we queue your application for 21 July and you collect the extra £1,500. If it dies outright, you choose between £7,500 now or bridging a few weeks — and for a winterless June/July gap, waiting usually wins. What you shouldn't do is panic-buy another oil boiler: that's £4,000–£6,000 for the privilege of staying on the most volatile fuel in the market.
Does LPG in bottles count, or only a bulk tank?
Both can qualify — what matters is that LPG (or oil) is genuinely the property's main heating fuel, evidenced at the survey. Bottled-gas setups are common in smaller cottages and park-adjacent homes, and they're among the most expensive heating in Britain, so the savings case is usually the strongest of all.
Is £9,000 ever more than the whole job?
Occasionally, for compact well-insulated homes — but the voucher can't exceed the installation cost, so the grant caps at your invoice total. In practice small-house owners pay a few hundred pounds to nothing; nobody receives change.
Can I combine it with anything else?
With 0% VAT, automatically — that's policy, not a grant, and it's already in every price. Not with another government grant for the same heat pump (ECO4 and BUS don't stack). Separate home improvements like solar have their own schemes and their own maths.
What happens after 31 March 2027?
The rate is expected to return to £7,500, assuming the scheme's overall funding (committed to 2028) isn't restructured again. Governments extend popular schemes and trim oversubscribed ones, so treat the window as real: nine months, one winter, heaviest demand at the end. Details of every scheme date are on the Boiler Upgrade Scheme hub.
Be Ready When the Window Opens
The survey is free, the quote is fixed, and the application goes in the moment vouchers open on 21 July 2026. If you heat with oil or LPG anywhere around Aylesbury, Buckingham, Wendover or Winslow, this is the strongest switching offer your house will ever see.