ECO4 ends 31 December 2026 — what replaces it

What "ECO4 ends on 31 December 2026" actually means

The Energy Company Obligation is not a government grant fund in the way most people picture one. It is a legal obligation placed on large energy suppliers, administered by Ofgem, requiring them to deliver a set amount of energy saving in eligible homes. Suppliers meet that obligation through contractors, who survey homes and install the measures. ECO4 is the fourth phase of that obligation and it began in April 2022.

ECO4 was originally due to close on 31 March 2026. It was extended once, by nine months, to 31 December 2026. The important detail — and the one most articles skip — is what the extension was for. It was not a top-up with fresh money and fresh targets. It was granted so that suppliers could finish delivering against their existing targets and remediate installations that had failed quality checks. No new obligation was set for the extension period, and nothing carries over into a successor.

Three practical consequences follow from that:

• ECO4 is still live, and still funding real installations right now. If you are eligible, you can apply today and the work is fully funded. Nothing about the wind-down stops that.
• Capacity shrinks as suppliers close in on their targets. A supplier that has already met its obligation has no reason to fund more work. This is why availability has always varied by area and by supplier, and why it gets patchier through 2026.
• There is no pot of money waiting on the other side of the deadline. Measures have to be installed and lodged before the scheme closes. An application that is only half-processed on 31 December does not become an application to something else on 1 January.

The other scheme people confuse with ECO4 — the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS), which offered single-measure insulation based partly on council tax band — closed to new applications on 31 March 2026 and has not reopened.

The ECO4 wind-down timeline

Everything below is confirmed on GOV.UK or by Ofgem. Dates in the future are the published scheme dates, not forecasts.

Read the table as two stories running side by side. The supplier-funded story (ECO4, LA Flex, GBIS) finishes at the end of 2026. The taxpayer-funded story — the Warm Homes: Local Grant and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme — runs on for years afterwards. That shift, from an obligation on your energy supplier to a grant you apply for through your council or an installer, is the single biggest change for households.

Which scheme replaces ECO4 for you

Nothing replaces ECO4 in one piece. ECO4 was unusual: one scheme, covering insulation and heating together under a "whole house" approach, fully funded, across England, Scotland and Wales. What comes after is a set of narrower schemes with different owners, different tests and different geography. Find the description below that fits your household.

1. Low income or on benefits in England — the Warm Homes: Local Grant

The Warm Homes: Local Grant is the closest thing to a direct replacement for ECO4, and it is the route most former ECO4 households in England should look at first. It is worth £500 million, it runs from April 2025 to March 2028, and it is delivered by local councils and their appointed installers — not by the open market. Measures are fully funded for eligible households: insulation, low-carbon heating, smart heating controls and solar panels, chosen by survey rather than picked off a menu.

You qualify through one of three routes:

• Income. Gross household income under £36,000 a year.
• Benefits. Someone in the home receives one of six qualifying benefits — Universal Credit, Pension Credit (guarantee or savings credit), Housing Benefit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or income-related Employment and Support Allowance — or your council issues an ECO Flex Route 2 declaration for your household.
• Postcode. Your home sits in a postcode in the two most income-deprived deciles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (deciles 1 and 2).

On top of one of those three, two property tests apply. Your home must have an EPC rating of D, E, F or G — homes already at A, B or C are considered efficient and are not the target. And the property must be privately owned: owner-occupied or privately rented. Park homes are eligible. Social housing is not, because it is funded separately.

Spending is capped at £16,600 for energy-performance measures and a further £16,600 for low-carbon heating, averaged across a council's whole project rather than applied rigidly to each home — so a house needing more than average is not automatically ruled out. Installers must be TrustMark-registered and work to PAS 2035:2023, the same quality framework that applied under ECO4.

You start with the free GOV.UK referral service, which passes your details to your council. GOV.UK says your council should contact you within 10 working days. One caveat matters more than any other: not every council joined the scheme, and delivery is organised postcode by postcode, so availability is genuinely local. GOV.UK publishes the list of successful local authorities, and our council guides cover the picture area by area. Our step-by-step application guide walks through what you will be asked for.

2. You need new heating — the Boiler Upgrade Scheme

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) covers England and Wales and is currently funded to March 2030. It is the opposite of ECO4 in one crucial way: it is not means-tested. There is no benefits test and no income test. Anyone who owns an eligible property can use it.

Current grant rates:

• £7,500 towards an air source, ground source or water source heat pump.
• £9,000 for oil and LPG homes with no mains gas connection — but only for installations between 21 July 2026 and 31 March 2027. Homes on coal or solid fuel stay at £7,500.
• £5,000 towards a biomass boiler.
• £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump, live since 28 April 2026.
• Heat batteries are not yet claimable. A £2,500 grant has been announced under the Warm Homes Plan but the route to claim it is not open. No installer can deduct it from a quote today.

Be clear-eyed about the difference from ECO4. BUS is a contribution, not full funding. The grant is taken off the installer's price and you pay the balance, which on a typical air source heat pump installation is still a four-figure sum — see our heat pump cost breakdown for what people actually pay. ECO4 left an eligible household with nothing to pay. BUS does not. For a household that qualified for ECO4 on benefits, that is a real loss, and it is why the Warm Homes: Local Grant matters so much in England.

The mechanics are straightforward. You choose an MCS-certified installer from the open market; they apply for the voucher on your behalf and knock it off your quote. You need a valid EPC for the property. The old requirement to carry out the EPC's recommended loft and cavity wall insulation first was removed in May 2024, so poor insulation no longer blocks an application. Once issued, the voucher has to be redeemed — the system commissioned — within 120 days. If you are weighing the two schemes against each other, our ECO4 vs Boiler Upgrade Scheme comparison sets them side by side.

3. Scotland — Warmer Homes Scotland

ECO4 covered England, Scotland and Wales, so Scottish households lose it on the same date. The Warm Homes: Local Grant, however, is England only — it will not help you in Scotland, whatever a cold caller tells you.

Scotland's equivalent route is Warmer Homes Scotland, the Scottish Government's fuel poverty scheme, accessed through Home Energy Scotland. Home Energy Scotland is the front door: free impartial advice, an assessment, and a referral into Warmer Homes Scotland and the Scottish Government's other home energy support. If you are in Scotland and you were counting on ECO4, that is the number to call before the end of the year. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme does not cover Scotland; Scottish heat pump support runs through Home Energy Scotland instead.

4. Wales — Nest

In Wales, the Welsh Government's fuel poverty scheme is Nest, at nest.gov.wales. Nest offers free advice to any household in Wales and funded home energy improvements to those who meet its criteria. Unlike the Warm Homes: Local Grant, Nest is not limited to England — but equally it is not a devolved copy of it, and its rules are its own.

Welsh households do keep the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which covers England and Wales, so the £7,500 heat pump route — and the £9,000 oil and LPG rate until 31 March 2027 — remains open in Wales after ECO4 closes.

5. Private tenants and landlords

Private rented homes were eligible under ECO4 with the landlord's agreement, and the same broad logic carries into the Warm Homes: Local Grant. The property must be privately owned, which includes privately rented, and the landlord has to consent because it is their building. Landlords may be asked to contribute towards the cost of improvements to a rented home.

One rule catches people out. A private rental already rated EPC F or G cannot normally be let at all under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards, so for the grant to apply to such a property the landlord must hold a registered MEES exemption. If your landlord has not registered one, that is the first conversation to have. Landlords weighing up the economics will find the wider picture in our guide to energy grants for landlords.

For heating specifically, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is applied for by the property owner, so a landlord can use it on a rented property.

6. Social housing tenants

If you rent from a council or a housing association, the Warm Homes: Local Grant is explicitly not for you — social housing is excluded from it. That is not because social homes have been forgotten; it is because the money is routed differently. Government funding for social homes goes to the landlord, through the separate Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, and the landlord decides which of its properties are upgraded and when.

So the practical step for a social tenant is to ask your landlord what Warm Homes funding they have been awarded and whether your home is in the programme. It is a different conversation from applying for a grant yourself, and applying to the council's grant team will simply route you back to your landlord. In the meantime you can still claim the Warm Home Discount on your energy bill from October 2026 if you are eligible.

ECO4 vs Warm Homes: Local Grant vs Boiler Upgrade Scheme

Three schemes, three very different designs. This is the comparison that matters most when ECO4 closes.

The pattern is clear enough. Breadth moves to the Warm Homes: Local Grant, but only in England and only for privately owned homes. Heating moves to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which is open to everyone but pays a contribution rather than the whole bill. Nobody inherits ECO4's combination of "fully funded" and "available across Great Britain". If you can use ECO4 before the end of December, use it.

What happens to an ECO4 application that isn't finished by 31 December 2026?

This is the question we are asked most, and it deserves a straight answer rather than reassurance. ECO4 measures have to be installed and lodged within the scheme period. The obligation is measured in delivered, notified measures — not in applications received. A survey booked for January is not an ECO4 measure.

What happens to work that is genuinely in flight on 31 December is a matter for Ofgem and the individual supplier, and there is no published household-facing guidance that says an unfinished job will be honoured afterwards. We are not going to invent one. What we can say with confidence is that there is no successor obligation for an unfinished ECO4 job to roll into — no ECO5 exists to inherit it.

In practice, that means the risk sits with the timing of your own installation, and there are sensible things to do about it:

• Apply now, not in November. A typical ECO4 journey runs from enquiry to survey to install over weeks, sometimes months. Late applications are the ones that fail.
• Get the installation date in writing. Ask the installer to confirm, in an email you keep, that the work will be completed and notified before 31 December 2026.
• Expect referrals to close early. Installers protect their pipelines. Many stop accepting new ECO4 referrals well before December so they can finish what they already hold.
• Run a second route in parallel. If you are in England, put in a Warm Homes: Local Grant referral as well. It costs nothing and it runs to 2028.
• Refuse any quote that depends on funding "coming through in the new year". That funding does not exist. Nor should you pay a deposit to hold a place in a queue — genuine ECO4 work is free to an eligible household.

Is there an ECO5?

No. No fifth phase of the Energy Company Obligation has been announced. The nine-month extension to ECO4 was structured as a wind-down — existing targets and remediation only — rather than as a bridge to another obligation, and government policy has moved in a different direction.

That direction is the Warm Homes Plan: home energy upgrades funded from public spending and delivered through local councils (the Warm Homes: Local Grant) and through social landlords (the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund), rather than through an obligation on energy suppliers. As part of that shift, an average £150 of policy costs came off household electricity bills from April 2026 (Budget 2025); ECO4 itself still runs to 31 December 2026.

The honest position on what comes after March 2028 is that we do not know, and neither does anybody else claiming otherwise. Funding beyond the current delivery periods has not been set out. We will update this page when it is, and it is worth bookmarking for that reason. What you should not do is wait: every scheme that is open today has a published end date, and none of them is 2029.

What to do before 31 December 2026

A short, ordered checklist. Most households can work through it in an afternoon.

1. Check ECO4 and LA Flex today. If someone in your home receives a means-tested benefit, or your council operates a flexible eligibility route, this is still the best offer on the table. Start with the eligibility checker or read the full ECO4 eligibility rules.
2. Put in a Warm Homes: Local Grant referral as well if you are in England. It is free, it does not affect an ECO4 application, and it runs to 2028.
3. Find your EPC. Both schemes need your home to be EPC D or below, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme needs a valid certificate. Our guide to EPC ratings and ECO4 explains what the bands mean in practice.
4. If heating is the real problem and you can fund part of the cost, get two or three quotes from MCS-certified installers under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme — and if you are off the gas grid on oil or LPG, do it before 31 March 2027 while the rate is £9,000.
5. Claim the Warm Home Discount from October 2026 — £150 off your electricity bill is separate from all of the above and does not use up any other entitlement.
6. Never pay upfront and never hand over bank details to a cold caller. Check the installer on the TrustMark register first.