The Warm Homes: Local Grant, Explained

What the Warm Homes: Local Grant is

The Warm Homes: Local Grant (WH:LG) is an England-only funding scheme delivered by your local council. It replaced the Home Upgrade Grant Phase 2 (HUG2), which closed on 31 March 2025. Under WH:LG your council arranges energy-efficiency work on your home at no cost to you as the occupant, and the scheme is scheduled to run from April 2025 to around 31 March 2028.

It sits under the wider Warm Homes Plan, the government’s £15bn umbrella programme published on 21 January 2026 that aims to upgrade up to five million homes. You do not apply to the Warm Homes Plan directly — it funds delivery schemes like this one. If you want the background on that programme specifically, the sibling guide at warmhomesplanfunding.co.uk covers it in detail; here we focus on the grant you can actually apply for.

One point to fix in your mind before anything else: WH:LG is for England only. If you live elsewhere, the equivalent routes are on our nation pages — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Putting an English scheme on a Scottish or Welsh home is one of the fastest ways to waste weeks, because the eligibility and the delivery body are completely different.

Who is eligible

WH:LG uses a two-part test. Your home has to qualify and your household has to qualify.

The property test is about how energy-efficient your home already is. Your home generally needs an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of D to G — in other words, it is one of the less efficient homes that stands to gain most from an upgrade. If you do not know your rating, check your EPC first; it is free to look up and it decides whether almost every insulation grant is open to you at all.

The household test gives you three separate routes in, and you only need to meet one of them:

• Income route — your household income is usually £36,000 a year or less.
• Benefits route — someone in the household receives a qualifying means-tested benefit.
• Postcode route — your home is in an eligible low-income area, defined by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) income deciles 1 and 2.

That third route matters, because it means some households who are not on benefits and are a little above the income line can still qualify purely on where they live. If you are not on benefits, it is worth reading our page on insulation grants if you are not on benefits — WH:LG’s income and postcode routes are among the clearest non-benefit options in England.

Crucially, WH:LG covers both on-gas and off-gas homes. Some earlier schemes were aimed mainly at homes off the mains gas grid; this one is not restricted that way, which widens who can take part.

Eligibility factor	Requirement
Nation	England only
Property	EPC rating D to G
Household — route 1	Income usually £36,000/year or less
Household — route 2	A qualifying means-tested benefit
Household — route 3	Eligible low-income (IMD decile 1–2) postcode
Fuel type	On-gas and off-gas both eligible
Cost to occupant	None (council-delivered)

What it pays for

WH:LG is designed around a “fabric first” idea — get the building envelope right, then heat it efficiently. Funded measures reported under the scheme include:

• Insulation — wall, loft and underfloor
• Air source heat pumps
• Heating controls
• Solar

Because it can fund the more expensive fabric measures, WH:LG is often the more useful route for homes that need serious work rather than a single cheap top-up. If your main need is a specific measure, our measure guides walk through what each one involves and roughly what it costs unsubsidised: loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, solid wall insulation and underfloor insulation. Solid wall work is where grant funding matters most — internal wall insulation typically costs around £12,000 and external around £18,000 to self-fund, so a scheme that meets that cost is a genuinely large saving.

How much you can get

This is where honesty matters. WH:LG has been reported to fund up to around £30,000 per home, and you will see that figure quoted widely. But that £30,000 is a secondary-sourced figure — the official Warm Homes: Local Grant apply page{rel=“noopener” target=“_blank”} does not state a maximum. So treat it as an indication of scale, not a promise: reported up to around £30,000, but check the current gov.uk guidance and, more importantly, what your own council is actually offering.

What you pay is straightforward: nothing. WH:LG is delivered at no cost to the occupant. There is no contribution model here of the kind you sometimes see on ECO4 for high-cost measures. That said, what is available depends heavily on your council’s local scheme and budget.

Availability is council-by-council

WH:LG is not a single national application. Central government allocates funding to local authorities, and each council runs its own delivery — with its own timing, its own installer arrangements and its own budget. That has real consequences:

• Two neighbouring councils can be at completely different stages. One may be actively taking referrals; the next may have paused, or may not yet have launched.
• Funding can run out locally even while the national scheme is still “open” on paper.
• The exact mix of measures offered can vary by area.

So the honest position is: WH:LG may be excellent where you live, or effectively unavailable this year, and the only way to know is to check your specific council. Do not assume, and do not let anyone tell you a place is guaranteed before your council has confirmed it.

How to apply

There are two steps, and both are free.

1. Use the government eligibility checker. Start at the official Warm Homes: Local Grant page on gov.uk{rel=“noopener” target=“_blank”}. It will point you toward whether your household and property look eligible and how to proceed in your area.
2. Go through your local council. Because delivery is local, your council (or its appointed delivery partner) is who arranges the assessment and the work. If the national checker suggests you qualify, the council confirms it and manages the job.

Applying to WH:LG through these official channels never costs money. Our full walkthrough is on the how to apply page, and if you want to sanity-check your position across several schemes at once, use the eligibility checker.

Watch for scams — and insist on quality

Any grant scheme attracts cold-callers. Genuine WH:LG work comes through your council, not through an unsolicited phone call, text or doorstep sales pitch promising “free insulation”. If someone contacts you out of the blue, treat it with caution and go back to the official route yourself. Our guide to insulation grant scams sets out the classic funnels.

Quality is not optional either. Grant-funded work should be carried out by a TrustMark-registered installer working to the PAS 2035 retrofit standard, and a compliant job starts with a proper retrofit assessment — not a salesperson simply pushing one measure. You can check a firm at trustmark.org.uk{rel=“noopener” target=“_blank”}, and the Energy Saving Trust{rel=“noopener” target=“_blank”} has impartial background on the measures themselves. Never pay upfront and never let work start before written approval.

Where WH:LG sits among the schemes

WH:LG is one of two live routes in England, alongside ECO4 (open to 31 December 2026). The older Great British Insulation Scheme closed on 31 March 2026 and is not coming back, and HUG2 closed in 2025. For the full picture across every scheme and nation, see our grants and funding hub. If you are weighing routes, free insulation grants — is it really free? is worth a read: WH:LG is one of the genuinely no-cost-to-occupant options, which is not true of every scheme that markets itself that way.

Not sure where to start? Run the eligibility checker or send us your details through the contact form and we will point you to the right official channel.