The Boiler Upgrade Scheme: £7,500 grants your customers don't know about

There’s a £7,500 cheque sitting on the table for thousands of UK homeowners, and most of them have never heard of it. For heating engineers, that’s not a subsidy story — it’s a marketing gap you can drive a van through.

Here’s how the Boiler Upgrade Scheme works in 2026, what the numbers say about demand, and how installers are turning it into a pipeline of high-value work.

The scheme in one minute

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) gives homeowners in England and Wales £7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump when replacing a fossil-fuel system. The money goes to the installer and comes straight off the customer’s quote — so a £12,500 installation is pitched as £5,000.

The catch that matters to you: only MCS-certified installers can process the voucher. The customer doesn’t apply — you do, through Ofgem, on their behalf. Which means the installer who explains the grant usually wins the job.

Demand just broke every record

This isn’t a niche scheme anymore. Applications have climbed every year, and 2025 beat the previous annual record inside ten months:

Behind that: the government doubled the scheme’s budget to £295 million for 2025–26, and more than 102,000 applications have been made since launch, with over 86,000 vouchers approved. This is a market with public money behind it and years left to run.

What’s in it for a heating business

Run the numbers on your average boiler swap against a BUS installation:

	Typical boiler swap	Heat pump via BUS
Job value	£2,500–£4,000	£10,000–£15,000
Customer pays	All of it	Job minus £7,500
Days on site	1–2	2–5
Competition	Every plumber in town	MCS-certified firms only
Follow-on work	Annual service	Service plan + rads + controls

Fewer competitors, bigger tickets, and a grant that does your discounting for you. MCS certification costs real time and money — but at £7,500 of leverage per job, it’s one of the few accreditations that directly pays rent.

How installers actually win BUS work

The grant is only leverage if customers find you when they Google it. Three moves:

1. Build a page for the searches people actually type. “Heat pump grant [your town]”, “boiler upgrade scheme installer near me”, “£7,500 heat pump grant” — these are high-intent searches with thin competition in most areas. One clear page explaining the scheme, with your MCS number and example pricing after the grant, will outrank national noise locally.

2. Show the maths, not the policy. “£12,500 installed. £5,000 after the government’s £7,500 grant. We handle the paperwork.” That’s the whole pitch. Put it on the page, in the quote, on the van.

3. Answer the fear questions in the open. Will it heat my radiators? What happens in winter? Is my house suitable? Every question you answer on your website is an objection you don’t have to argue on the doorstep — and Google rewards pages that answer real questions.

Move before your competitors do

Every month the scheme breaks records, more installers notice. The firms that built their “heat pump grant” pages two years ago now own those searches in their towns — the same window is open right now in most of the country.

We build heating engineers’ websites with the grant pages, the local SEO and the proof baked in. Get a free mockup and see what “heat pump grants [your town]” could look like with your name on it.