Illustrative photo.
Warm Homes: Local Grant puts £500m through councils to upgrade low income homes in England, and its delivery window closes on 31 March 2028. This guide sets out what the scheme guidance asks of the homes, the measures and the installers, and what to check before appointing a delivery partner.
The scheme rules fit in one table
The policy guidance for local authorities, updated on GOV.UK in July 2026, sets the rules. These are the ones that shape delivery.
| Rule | What the guidance says |
|---|---|
| Funding and dates | £500m, with a delivery window from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2028 |
| Who receives it | Councils in England: 74 projects involving 271 local authorities. The Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities, and their councils, receive theirs through integrated settlements instead |
| Households | Any one of three routes: a postcode in income deciles 1 to 2 of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation; a specified means tested benefit or ECO Flex route 2; or gross household income below £36,000, or below the after housing costs threshold |
| Homes | EPC D to G, owner occupied or privately rented. Social housing only as in-fill, capped at 10% of a project's homes, with a 50% landlord contribution |
| Cost caps | £16,600 per home for energy performance upgrades and £16,600 for low carbon heating, averaged across the project |
| Private landlords | One home fully funded per landlord, then a 50% contribution for each further home |
| Standards | PAS 2035:2023 for every upgrade; installers TrustMark registered and certified for each measure; every measure lodged with TrustMark |
The aspiration is EPC band C wherever that is possible within the cost caps, but the guidance is clear that fuel poor households should not be excluded because their home cannot get there.
Finding and verifying households is part of delivery
A council cannot take a household's word for it. The guidance says self-declarations are not an acceptable method of verification and that robust checks are required. Up to 15% of project spend can go on administration and ancillary costs, which explicitly include searching for eligible homes, signing households up, validating and assessing them. DESNZ also encourages councils to work with local charities and community organisations, partly to reduce drop-out.
That is where a delivery partner earns its place. On the City of York Council Home Upgrade Grant programme (60 privately owned off-gas homes, with Miles Sharples as project lead and a skilled, accredited workforce), signing up and qualifying homeowners sat with the delivery team. Sign up events ran at community venues with the Energy Friends charity and the Fairer Warmth team, and resident liaison officers stayed with each owner from survey to the handover of warranties. On the Durham County Council LAD2 programme of 250 homes, residents trained as Energy Champions helped reach hard to reach and vulnerable homeowners.
Send us the homes, measures and timescale. We will set out how each measure would be certified and what we need to survey and price.
Certification has to match every measure
Any energy performance or heating measure compatible with the latest RdSAP is eligible, except fossil fuel heating. What matters is who is certified to install each one. Ask every bidder for a measure by measure certification map, using this table as the template.
| Measure | Installer requirement in the guidance |
|---|---|
| Insulation, glazing and other fabric measures | TrustMark registered and certified under the latest PAS 2030 for that measure |
| Solar PV and low carbon heating | An MCS certified installer, an MCS listed product and the MCS installation standard for the technology (high heat retention storage heaters come under PAS 2030 instead) |
| Domestic batteries | An MCS certified installer working to MIS 3012, and only alongside existing or new solar PV. Installs resumed on 2 February 2026 |
| Not currently eligible | Heat batteries, until they can be certified to the scheme's standards, and connections to heat networks |
Five measures also carry price limits that must be met on average by project closure: external wall insulation, internal wall insulation, double or triple glazing, park home insulation and solar thermal. Councils receive the limits under a non-disclosure agreement, so ask bidders to price those measures as separate lines.
Lodgement and reporting run to fixed clocks
The delivery guidance turns the paperwork into deadlines, and most of them depend on the installer.
- A TrustMark PAS 2035 project created for every home in an approved batch, no later than four weeks after batch approval.
- Final lodgements closing each project within six weeks of the works being completed.
- Property addresses uploaded to the DESNZ portal within six weeks of works starting.
- A monthly data report by the tenth working day, covering homes validated, assessed, started, treated with at least one measure and completed.
- Assurance on at least 10% of completed installations, through desktop reviews of documents and photographs and through site audits.
- An appropriate measure guarantee in place before upgrades begin.
The guidance also warns against lodging in bulk at the end: on earlier schemes that left non-compliant measures flagged too late to fix. A partner who photographs every stage and lodges as each home progresses makes all six of these easier.
Residents need clear advice and adjustments for disruption
Owner occupiers and tenants are not required to contribute to the cost of upgrades. Where low carbon heating is offered, the household must get clear advice on the likely bill impact, and the final decision rests solely with them. The guidance's equality screening flags that disabled residents, pregnant residents, older residents and some residents because of religious belief may face greater disruption, and encourages councils and installers to make adjustments, pointing to the RISE toolkit on equality, diversity and inclusion in retrofit.
Plan backwards from 31 March 2028
The delivery window closes on 31 March 2028. The Warm Homes Plan says that from 2027/28 the government intends to integrate the Local Grant and the Social Housing Fund into a single low income scheme with a shift towards area based delivery. Councils and local authorities still building a pipeline should work backwards: the last homes have to finish early enough for lodgements to close within six weeks, and households need signing up, verifying and assessing before any of that.
What to ask a delivery partner
- Their PAS 2030 and MCS scope, measure by measure, and who certifies the rest.
- Their TrustMark registration, and who creates and closes each PAS 2035 project.
- Who the retrofit assessor and retrofit coordinator will be.
- How households will be found, verified and supported, and by whom.
- Photographs and data for each home, ready for your monthly return and your 10% assurance sample.
- Guarantees for each measure, in place before work starts.
- Capacity: homes per month, and how the workforce is mobilised.
Our answers start in the supplier information pack: PAS 2030:2023 for flat roof insulation (measure B5), MCS certification for solar PV and battery storage, and TrustMark registration. Other measures are installed under the certification of the main contractor or the programme. Main contractors bidding for a programme can see how we work on our sub-contracting page, and councils can send a programme through our enquiry form.
- GOV.UK (DESNZ): Warm Homes: Local Grant policy guidance for local authorities, updated July 2026 (read 21 October 2026)
- GOV.UK (DESNZ): Warm Homes: Local Grant updated delivery guidance for grant recipients, March 2026 (read 21 October 2026)
- GOV.UK (DESNZ): Warm Homes: Local Grant, guidance for local authorities (read 21 October 2026)
- GOV.UK (DESNZ): Warm Homes Plan (read 21 October 2026)
Miles has led retrofit programmes at scale across the UK, with long-standing relationships with local authorities including Kirklees Council, Durham County Council and Ribble Valley Borough Council. He has project-directed programmes for housing associations and delivery partners including Aspire Housing, Sureserve, LivGreen and BroadOak, and for energy suppliers including E.ON Next, Utilita, British Gas and Octopus, and for tier one contractors including UKEM.