How to apply for the Warm Homes: Local Grant, step by step

Step 1 — work out which route you are using

The scheme has three alternative ways to be treated as income-eligible, and you only need one. Knowing which one applies to you before you start decides what paperwork you will be asked for:

Alongside the income test, two property rules apply to everyone: the home must be in England, privately owned or privately rented, and rated EPC D, E, F or G — bands A to C are ineligible in all circumstances, and the ECO Flex Route 2 pathway is narrower still (EPC E to G only). Look your certificate up free on GOV.UK — Find an energy certificate. New builds and self-builds that have never been occupied are out of scope, and if you rent privately there are extra rules on consent and EPC F/G exemptions.

Step 2 — check your council is taking part

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that most often explains silence. The Warm Homes: Local Grant was allocated by expression of interest, and not every area is in the national scheme.

GOV.UK publishes the definitive list of successful local authorities — around 73 funded projects, many of them consortia in which one lead authority delivers on behalf of a group of councils. The largest, the Midlands Net Zero Hub, covers dozens of member authorities under a single allocation. So your own council may not appear by name while your area is still covered: check the consortium members, not just the headline list.

There is also one significant carve-out. Greater Manchester Combined Authority and West Midlands Combined Authority received Warm Homes funding through their integrated settlements, so they and their constituent councils are not permitted to take part in the national scheme. Those areas are funded through devolved retrofit programmes instead. The councils named in the guidance are:

• West Midlands: Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton
• Greater Manchester: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan

If you live in one of those, do not conclude there is no help — go to your council’s or combined authority’s own retrofit pages, which run the devolved equivalent. Our council guides directory is a starting point.

Step 3 — get your evidence together

One rule shapes all of this: self-declaration is not accepted. Councils are required to carry out documented checks, so the faster you can produce evidence, the faster you move. Have ready:

• Photo ID for the applicant
• Proof you live at the property — needed on all three routes, including the postcode route
• Proof of ownership (title deeds, mortgage statement) or, if renting, your tenancy agreement plus your landlord’s willingness to complete a declaration form
• Your EPC, or the address details for the council to look it up
• A benefit award letter if you are using the benefits route
• Income evidence for every adult counted if you are using the income route — payslips, P60, self-assessment figures, pension statements, often bank statements — plus a mortgage statement or tenancy agreement if you are asking the council to consider After Housing Costs income

Step 4 — apply through GOV.UK

Use the official service: Apply for the Warm Homes: Local Grant. It is free, it is the government’s own referral route, and it passes your details to the right council. You will be asked for your postcode, your tenure, income or benefit information, and your property’s EPC.

GOV.UK states that your local council will usually contact you within 10 working days to gather more information and arrange a home survey. Some councils also run their own application form — if yours does, either route reaches the same place.

Step 5 — eligibility verification and the retrofit assessment

Once the council has you, two things happen in order. First it verifies eligibility against the route you used and the property rules. Then, if you pass, a qualified assessor visits.

That visit is not a sales call. It is a retrofit assessment under PAS 2035:2023, the standard every project on this scheme must follow. A retrofit coordinator — a qualified specialist who acts as project manager for the whole job — uses the assessment to design a package of measures suited to the property, in the right order. Pre-retrofit assessments carried out since 15 June 2025 use the current RdSAP10 methodology, and a post-retrofit assessment follows once the work is done, which is what updates your EPC.

Quality control is the point of all this. The guidance requires that installers are TrustMark-registered and certified under the current version of PAS 2030 or by MCS for the measures they fit, that MCS certification is required for low-carbon heating measures, that every measure is lodged on the TrustMark data warehouse, and that an appropriate measure guarantee is in place before work starts. You can verify an installer yourself at TrustMark and MCS.

Step 6 — what the grant can pay for

Funding sits under two separate cost caps, both set at £16,600:

Read the caps correctly. They are the amount a council may spend on average per home across its whole project, measured at project closure — not a personal allowance. Some homes cost more and some far less. Nobody is entitled to £16,600, let alone £33,200, and no installer can promise you a figure.

Two other points worth knowing. All primary heating fuels are in scope — gas, oil, LPG, coal, solid fuel, electricity and district heat networks — and homes previously treated under ECO can be treated again, subject to the eligibility rules. Heat batteries are not yet eligible under this scheme; the guidance makes their eligibility conditional on MCS certification being available first. If a heat pump is what you want and you are not eligible here, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays £7,500 (£9,000 for oil or LPG homes off the mains gas grid between 21 July 2026 and 31 March 2027) with no means test at all.

Step 7 — installation, and what it costs you

Approved installers procured by your council carry out the work; the retrofit coordinator signs it off and lodges it; your EPC is updated by the post-retrofit assessment. Contributions are fixed by tenure, not negotiation:

• Owner-occupiers must not be required to contribute anything. You may choose to self-fund extras the coordinator did not recommend — cosmetic work, for instance — but that is your choice, separate from the grant.
• Private tenants are not required or expected to contribute anything.
• Private landlords get one property fully funded and pay 50% from the second onwards. See tenants and landlords.

Timescales and the funding window

The delivery window opened on 1 April 2025 and closes on 31 March 2028. Inside that, honest expectations look like this: about 10 working days to first contact, then a locally determined wait for a survey, a design and a slot in the installer’s programme. Councils procure their own delivery partners and run their own pipelines, so a straightforward loft job in one area can complete faster than a first survey happens in another.

Demand is the other variable. Councils have to decide for themselves how to handle more eligible households than funding — some operate first come, first served, others prioritise on a published, consistent basis. What a council cannot do is exclude a group that national rules make eligible. Applying earlier in a delivery year is generally better than later.

Your next step

If you already know your route, go straight to the free GOV.UK service. If you are not sure — or you want to see whether ECO4 or the Boiler Upgrade Scheme would move faster for your home — start with our eligibility checker, then read what replaces ECO4 for the full post-2026 picture.

Common questions about applying