The £2,500 air-to-air heat pump grant

You may have seen it claimed that the air-to-air grant does not begin until 2027. That is out of date. The £2,500 air-to-air pathway of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has been law since 28 April 2026, confirmed on the government's own Boiler Upgrade Scheme guidance.

There is a second half to this that almost nobody states, and it matters more than the 2027 confusion. The grant itself is law and your eligibility is real, but no air-to-air product has reached the MCS Product Directory yet, so no installer can issue a Boiler Upgrade Scheme voucher today. Air-to-air enters MCS scheme scope on 5 December 2026, and vouchers follow once certified products list. Get quotes now, but treat the grant as pending rather than banked.

Air-to-air heat pumps sit at the centre of the scheme because they do two jobs, and with around 55% of UK homes now overheating in summer, the cooling half matters as much as the heating. The scheme funds the exact bridge product - one unit that cools in summer and heats in winter. What that means practically: settle your eligibility and get your quotes in now, then be ready to claim the moment certified products list, rather than discovering the timing after you have committed to an install.

The grant is genuinely useful, but it pays in exactly one of two situations. We show both with equal weight, and never as a blanket promise, because whether it pays turns on a single decision: do you replace your heating, or keep it?

Eligible - you replace your heating. If an air-to-air heat pump replaces a fossil-fuel or electric system (mains gas, oil, LPG, electric storage heaters or direct electric) and is fitted by an MCS-certified installer, the £2,500 applies, and the old system is decommissioned rather than run alongside the new one.

Not eligible - you keep your boiler. If you keep your existing heating and add cooling as a standalone unit, that cooling-only add-on does not qualify for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant, however it is marketed. Adding air conditioning while keeping your gas boiler is a private-pay job, carried out by an F-Gas / REFCOM-registered engineer rather than an MCS-certified one.

Grant rules as of August 2026 and subject to change, so always confirm the current terms on gov.uk before applying.

MCS - the Microgeneration Certification Scheme - is the quality standard the installer must hold for the grant to pay. It certifies the installer and the installation work, not the homeowner and not GetComfort.

We route a grant-eligible air-to-air enquiry to an MCS-certified installer, and a cooling-only job to an F-Gas / REFCOM-registered engineer, because refrigerant-only work is what those engineers are licensed for. GetComfort does not employ, and does not claim to be, an accredited installer - our job is the property model and the routing; the regulated installation work is theirs.

Whether your own home qualifies depends on your current heating, whether you are willing to replace it, and the installer's accreditation - a per-property question no national page can answer for you. Our free checker settles it against your address in seconds, alongside your overheating score, the right system for your home, and a net cost after any grant you are actually entitled to.