Warm Homes: Local Grant postcode check: the IMD deciles 1–2 route

What the postcode route is

The Warm Homes: Local Grant gives councils three alternative ways to confirm a household is on a low income. The first — pathway 1 in the DESNZ policy guidance — is geographic. Rather than ask the household to prove anything about its finances, it uses the deprivation statistics for the neighbourhood the home sits in.

The guidance is direct about the consequence: households in IMD income deciles 1–2 are eligible without needing an income verification check. Councils are not required to verify income for these households, though they will still expect proof of address, and every other eligibility test — tenure, EPC band, participating area — still applies and must be checked.

For a working household with no benefits and no appetite for handing over payslips, this is by far the simplest door into the scheme. It is also the route that makes area-based delivery work: the guidance encourages councils to concentrate on these neighbourhoods so they can upgrade several homes on a street at once.

What the Indices of Multiple Deprivation are

The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) are the official measure of relative deprivation in England, produced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The IMD brings together seven distinct domains of deprivation — including income, employment, health and crime — which are combined and weighted into an overall score for each small area.

Two things about that definition matter for this scheme.

First, the scheme uses the income domain, not the overall index. That is what “IMD:ID” means — Indices of Multiple Deprivation: Income Deprivation. A neighbourhood can rank badly overall on health or crime and still not be in the income deciles the grant targets, and the reverse is equally possible.

Second, the IMD is calculated for every Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in England — a small statistical neighbourhood, not a town, ward or council. All LSOAs in England are ranked by deprivation and then split into ten equal groups, or deciles.

What “deciles 1–2” actually means

Rank every neighbourhood in England from most deprived to least deprived, then cut the list into ten equal slices:

• Decile 1 = the most income-deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in England
• Decile 2 = the next 10%
• … through to decile 10, the least deprived 10%

The Warm Homes: Local Grant postcode route covers deciles 1 and 2 only — the most income-deprived fifth of England. That is a deliberate narrowing. Phase 2 of the Home Upgrade Grant, the scheme’s predecessor, extended the same route to decile 3; the guidance explains that the Warm Homes: Local Grant limited it to deciles 1–2 because it covers a different segment of the housing stock, including homes on the gas grid as well as off it. If you were told you qualified on a postcode basis under an older scheme, do not assume it carries over.

Which list your council is using

This is the part that changed recently, and it is worth getting right before you conclude anything.

The eligible-postcode list first published for the scheme in 2024 was built on IMD 2019 data. The Indices of Multiple Deprivation were then updated in late 2025, which produced a new set of eligible IMD:ID 1–2 postcodes. DESNZ published the updated list alongside its policy guidance, keeping the older 2019 list available in parallel for a transitional period. In the guidance’s own terms:

• the 2025-based list could be used for verifying eligibility immediately;
• the 2019-based list remained usable for treatment until the end of the first delivery year (2025/26);
• from the second year of delivery onwards, any newly verified pathway-1 household must be in a postcode on the IMD 2025 list;
• a property already verified in year one on either list may still receive its upgrades later.

In practice, that means the IMD 2025 list is the operative one now. If a council or an installer told you in 2025 that your postcode qualified, and you never got as far as being verified, check again rather than assume.

Why the next street can be different

The most common complaint about this route is that a neighbour two minutes away qualifies and you do not. That is a direct consequence of how the geography works, not an error.

An LSOA is a small neighbourhood area, and the boundaries are drawn for statistical consistency rather than to match how a place feels to live in. A single LSOA can contain a mix of housing, and the boundary between two of them can run along a road, a railway or the back of a terrace. Your postcode sits in exactly one LSOA, and it inherits that LSOA’s decile. Two similar houses either side of a boundary can therefore land in different deciles.

It is also why the postcode route is a proxy rather than a test of your circumstances. A comfortable household inside a decile-1 neighbourhood qualifies on this pathway; a struggling household just outside it does not, and has to use one of the other two. The guidance addresses the first half of that directly: councils should be satisfied the household is genuinely in or at risk of fuel poverty — it says this applies particularly on the IMD route, where no income check happens — and councils reserve the right not to treat a property where the household has high savings or a large asset value.

How to check your postcode

1. Start with the free GOV.UK service. Apply for the Warm Homes: Local Grant takes your postcode and details and refers you to your local council, which should contact you within 10 working days. This is the authoritative route and it costs nothing.
2. Check your own council’s Warm Homes page. Delivery is local: some councils publish their own eligibility checker or a list of targeted areas. Our council guides directory is a starting point for finding yours.
3. Look at the published source data if you want the underlying detail. The eligible-postcode lists are published alongside the scheme guidance on the GOV.UK Warm Homes: Local Grant publication hub, and the deprivation statistics themselves sit in the English indices of deprivation collection. These are large statistical datasets published for councils and analysts, not a consumer lookup — the GOV.UK service is easier.
4. Check your council is taking part at all. Not every area is in the national scheme. See how to apply for the participating-authority list and the combined-authority areas that are funded separately.

If your postcode does not qualify

Most households in England are not in deciles 1–2 — by definition, 80% are not. Failing the postcode test says nothing about the other two pathways, and they are assessed completely independently:

• The benefits route. Six means-tested benefits qualify a household with no income check, and anyone in the home can be the claimant. See the six.
• The income route. Gross household income of £36,000 or less, with an After Housing Costs alternative for households where rent or a mortgage takes a big share of net income. See the thresholds.
• ECO Flex Route 2. A council declaration based on at least two local proxies, for EPC E–G homes. How LA Flex works.
• Infill. Where a physically connected block or terrace is being upgraded together, councils can include homes that would not qualify alone, subject to the block’s income averages.
• Other schemes entirely. ECO4 to 31 December 2026, the non-means-tested Boiler Upgrade Scheme to March 2030, and everything else in our guide to what replaces ECO4.

Common questions about the postcode route