Where you live shouldn't decide whether your home gets warmer — but according to official data, it largely does. Since 2013, energy suppliers have installed 4.4 million energy-efficiency measures in British homes under the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), the government scheme now in its fourth phase, ECO4. We took the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's (DESNZ) own local-authority breakdown, standardised it against official household estimates, and ranked all 350 councils in Great Britain. The result is a stark map of a two-speed rollout.
How to read this study. "ECO measures per 1,000 households" is DESNZ's own standardised measure of local delivery. It counts every ECO measure installed between January 2013 and December 2025 (all four phases of the scheme — ECO4 is the current phase, running to December 2026) and divides by the number of households in each area. It shows how much cumulative ECO help a community has received, not an individual's odds of qualifying today. See the full methodology.
ECO4 ends 31 December 2026: what you can get now
If you were looking at ECO4, these are the schemes you can apply to today, and the ones that keep running after it closes.
- Warm Homes: Local Grant (England) — insulation, heat pumps and solar panels for privately owned or privately rented homes rated EPC D–G, through councils taking part, if household income is £36,000 or less, someone gets a qualifying means-tested benefit, or you live in one of the most deprived postcodes. Owner-occupiers can have the work fully funded; tenants pay nothing, and a landlord gets one home fully funded, then pays 50% from the second. It runs to March 2028. Apply free on GOV.UK; your council usually contacts you within 10 working days. How it works.
- Boiler Upgrade Scheme (England & Wales) — £7,500 off an air source or ground source heat pump for most homeowners replacing fossil-fuel heating — no income or benefits test, and since 28 April 2026 no valid EPC needed. Homes heated by oil or LPG with no mains gas connection get £9,000 off an air source or ground source heat pump until 31 March 2027. The installer claims it and takes it off the quote; you pay the rest. Boiler Upgrade Scheme guide.
- In Scotland or Wales? — the Warm Homes: Local Grant is England only. In Scotland, Warmer Homes Scotland funds insulation and heating (Home Energy Scotland, 0808 808 2282); in Wales, Nest does the same for low-income households in homes rated EPC E or below (0808 808 2244).
- Warm Home Discount — £150 off your electricity bill for winter 2026/27. In England and Wales it is usually paid automatically if you got Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit or income-related ESA on 23 August 2026. Who qualifies.
- ECO4, while it lasts — ECO4 can still fund work where a local installer has capacity, but only until 31 December 2026, and the work has to be finished, not just booked. There are no new targets and no ECO5. What replaces ECO4.
Sources, checked 10 October 2026: GOV.UK Warm Homes: Local Grant, GOV.UK Boiler Upgrade Scheme, SI 2026/390, Ofgem ECO, HMRC VAT Notice 708/6, GOV.UK Warm Home Discount, Home Energy Scotland, gov.wales Nest.
The headline numbers
Key findings
- A 30-fold gap. Bradford tops the table with 577.1 ECO measures per 1,000 households (126,438 measures across roughly 219,000 homes). At the other end, Wandsworth in south-west London has recorded just 18.8 per 1,000 — more than 30 times fewer per home.
- The North and Wales dominate. Every one of the top 12 councils sits in the North of England, the Midlands or Wales. The North West, North East, West Midlands, Yorkshire & The Humber and Wales have each delivered more than 210 measures per 1,000 households.
- London and the South East lag. London (73.1 per 1,000) and the South East (76.3) are the two lowest regions. Seven of the 20 lowest-ranked councils are London boroughs; the rest are affluent South East and East of England districts.
- Two areas recorded no ECO measures at all. The City of London (about 7,300 households) and the Isles of Scilly (fewer than 1,000) show zero ECO measures over the entire period — both are tiny, atypical authorities.
- The map tracks fuel poverty — by design. ECO4 directs its funding to low-income, fuel-poor and vulnerable households, so areas with more deprivation, older housing and more off-gas-grid homes see far more delivery. The postcode "lottery" is really a map of who the scheme is built to reach.
Top 20 local authorities: most ECO help per home
Ranked by ECO measures installed per 1,000 households, all schemes years combined (January 2013 to December 2025).
| # | Local authority | Region / nation | Per 1,000 homes | Total ECO measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bradford | Yorkshire and The Humber | 577.1 | 126,438 |
| 2 | Ceredigion | Wales | 575.4 | 18,349 |
| 3 | Pendle | North West | 540.9 | 21,147 |
| 4 | Blackburn with Darwen | North West | 516.7 | 30,975 |
| 5 | Leicester | East Midlands | 514.2 | 69,257 |
| 6 | Hyndburn | North West | 469.5 | 16,736 |
| 7 | Blackpool | North West | 458.0 | 29,774 |
| 8 | Denbighshire | Wales | 457.1 | 19,968 |
| 9 | Burnley | North West | 449.6 | 18,497 |
| 10 | Birmingham | West Midlands | 446.5 | 194,962 |
| 11 | Luton | East of England | 444.6 | 36,685 |
| 12 | Hartlepool | North East | 439.1 | 18,511 |
| 13 | Na h-Eileanan Siar | Scotland | 421.0 | 5,436 |
| 14 | East Renfrewshire | Scotland | 415.2 | 17,002 |
| 15 | Oldham | North West | 406.6 | 38,802 |
| 16 | Isle of Anglesey | Wales | 386.6 | 12,167 |
| 17 | Rotherham | Yorkshire and The Humber | 382.2 | 44,534 |
| 18 | Powys | Wales | 355.3 | 21,956 |
| 19 | Walsall | West Midlands | 350.7 | 40,323 |
| 20 | Gwynedd | Wales | 336.1 | 18,014 |
Bottom 20 local authorities: least ECO help per home
The 20 lowest-ranked councils with recorded delivery (ranks shown out of 350). The two authorities with zero measures — the City of London and the Isles of Scilly — are excluded here and discussed in the notes.
| # | Local authority | Region / nation | Per 1,000 homes | Total ECO measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 329 | Camden | London | 47.7 | 4,826 |
| 330 | Waverley | South East | 47.4 | 2,608 |
| 331 | Merton | London | 47.3 | 3,942 |
| 332 | Guildford | South East | 47.0 | 2,756 |
| 333 | East Hertfordshire | East of England | 46.9 | 3,041 |
| 334 | Vale of White Horse | South East | 46.8 | 2,924 |
| 335 | Welwyn Hatfield | East of England | 46.2 | 2,277 |
| 336 | Tunbridge Wells | South East | 45.5 | 2,287 |
| 337 | Reigate and Banstead | South East | 45.1 | 2,847 |
| 338 | Elmbridge | South East | 43.9 | 2,545 |
| 339 | Epsom and Ewell | South East | 42.6 | 1,365 |
| 340 | Uttlesford | East of England | 41.5 | 1,657 |
| 341 | Cambridge | East of England | 39.1 | 2,215 |
| 342 | Winchester | South East | 39.0 | 2,155 |
| 343 | Mole Valley | South East | 36.4 | 1,390 |
| 344 | Westminster | London | 24.9 | 2,567 |
| 345 | Kensington and Chelsea | London | 24.6 | 1,743 |
| 346 | Hammersmith and Fulham | London | 24.0 | 2,027 |
| 347 | Richmond upon Thames | London | 22.2 | 1,825 |
| 348 | Wandsworth | London | 18.8 | 2,685 |
The City of London (ranked 349th, 7,278 households) and the Isles of Scilly (350th, 976 households) both recorded zero ECO measures across 2013–2025. Both are unusually small and atypical — the City of London is almost entirely commercial, and the Isles of Scilly are a remote archipelago — so we exclude them from the "bottom 20" comparison to avoid distortion. They remain in the downloadable dataset.
The regional divide
Averaged across whole regions and nations, the North–South split is unmistakable. The North West has received more than three times as many ECO measures per household as London. The dashed line marks the Great Britain average of 155.7 per 1,000.
| Region / nation | Per 1,000 homes | Total ECO measures | Households (2025 est.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| North West | 241.4 | 791,587 | 3,279,057 |
| North East | 227.6 | 278,096 | 1,221,955 |
| West Midlands | 227.1 | 573,687 | 2,526,060 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 220.6 | 533,654 | 2,419,540 |
| East Midlands | 172.2 | 366,509 | 2,128,915 |
| South West | 104.0 | 266,897 | 2,565,287 |
| East of England | 96.8 | 265,626 | 2,744,058 |
| South East | 76.3 | 303,880 | 3,980,180 |
| London | 73.1 | 261,357 | 3,575,228 |
What's driving the divide?
The pattern is not random, and it isn't simply about which councils "try harder." ECO is funded by a levy on energy suppliers and, in its current ECO4 phase, is aimed entirely at low-income, fuel-poor and vulnerable households. Delivery therefore follows need:
- Deprivation and benefits eligibility. Most ECO help is unlocked by a means-tested benefit. Areas with more households on qualifying benefits have a far larger eligible population, so more measures are installed.
- Older, harder-to-heat housing. The northern mill towns near the top of the table — Pendle, Hyndburn, Burnley, Blackburn with Darwen — have large stocks of older terraced and solid-wall homes that qualify for insulation and heating upgrades.
- Off-gas-grid rural areas. Rural Welsh authorities (Ceredigion, Powys, Gwynedd, Isle of Anglesey) and the Scottish islands rank highly. Homes off the mains gas network are often more expensive to heat and eligible for a wider range of measures.
- Local flexibility. Councils can broaden eligibility in their area through ECO Flex (LA Flex), which lets them refer households that don't receive a qualifying benefit but are still on low incomes or vulnerable to cold. Active councils widen the pool further.
In short, the "postcode lottery" is largely a mirror of the country's fuel-poverty map. That is arguably the scheme working as intended — but it also means households in wealthier-looking areas can wrongly assume the help isn't for them.
Living in a low-ranked area doesn't mean you can't get help. These figures describe past delivery across a whole council, not your personal eligibility. ECO4 is assessed household by household. If you receive a qualifying benefit, or your council runs LA Flex, you may still qualify wherever you live. Check the ECO4 eligibility criteria or use our free eligibility checker.
Methodology & sources
Where the data comes from
All measure counts and household estimates are taken directly from the UK government's official statistics. We did not model, estimate or adjust any measure figure; every number on this page can be traced to the source files below.
- Primary source: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Household Energy Efficiency Statistics: detailed report 2025, published 19 March 2026. We used Table 1.4 — Household energy efficiency measures by scheme by administrative area from the accompanying tables (Detailed HEE tables, March 2026, Excel).
- Data period: ECO measures installed from January 2013 to the end of December 2025. ECO figures are based on the official statistics published on 19 March 2026.
- Household denominators: "Households with at least one usual resident" — ONS 2022-based household projections for England (mid-2025, Table 406); Welsh Government 2022-based household projections (mid-2025); and National Records of Scotland 2022-based household projections (mid-2025).
How we ranked councils
- The metric. "ECO measures per 1,000 households" is published directly by DESNZ in Table 1.4 (measures installed ÷ households × 1,000). We report DESNZ's published figure for each area.
- The unit. We ranked the 350 individual local authorities in Great Britain (unitary authorities, metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts, London boroughs, Welsh unitary authorities and Scottish council areas — ONS codes beginning E06, E07, E08, E09, W06 and S12). Aggregate rows for counties, regions and nations are excluded from the ranking to avoid double-counting, but are provided separately in the dataset.
- Scope of "ECO". The local-authority table reports total ECO delivery across all four phases of the scheme (ECO1–ECO4). DESNZ does not publish an ECO4-only breakdown at local-authority level, so our ranking reflects cumulative ECO delivery — the best available like-for-like measure of how much ECO help each area has received. ECO4 is the current phase and accounts for the most recent installations.
- Suppressed values. DESNZ suppresses very small counts to prevent disclosure; no local authority's ECO total was suppressed, so all 350 councils are ranked. Some smaller scheme figures (e.g. GBIS in a few boroughs) are marked "#" or "^" in the source and are carried through unchanged in our dataset.
- Boundary note. Per DESNZ, household estimates for Sheffield and Barnsley use pre-April 2025 geography boundaries; the 2023 Local Authority Geographies edition is used for authorities created on 1 April 2023. Figures are provisional and subject to revision.
Download the full dataset
All 350 local authorities plus regional and national totals — ECO measures, per-1,000 rates, GBIS totals and household estimates, as a clean CSV.