Bexley: £2,500 air-to-air heat pump grant

There is nothing unusual about Bexley's heating profile: roughly 85.9% mains gas and 13.5% electric, with the rest on oil, LPG or solid fuel. That ordinariness does not change what the grant needs from you - a genuine replacement of your existing heating, done by an MCS-certified installer.

The split across Bexley's EPC-certified stock is 85.9% mains gas, 13.5% electric and 0.2% oil, LPG or solid fuel, heating a home of the kinds we track locally runs to roughly £547 a year, band D is the commonest EPC rating here, covering 42% of rated homes and the fuel-mix split above is drawn from 97.9% of Bexley's EPC certificates, which makes it a genuine local measurement rather than a national average pinned to your postcode.

For a Bexley home, one decision settles whether the grant pays: replace your heating, or keep it. Both outcomes below carry equal weight - neither is the "default" answer.

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.

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.

Grant rules as of August 2026 and subject to change, so always confirm the current terms on gov.uk before applying. The grant itself is a national government scheme - the London Borough of Bexley has no say over your eligibility for it. If your Bexley home also needs planning permission for the outdoor unit, that is a separate, local question our planning pages cover.

MCS - the certification scheme for registered installers - is the quality standard your installer must hold for the grant to pay. It certifies the installer and the installation work, never the homeowner and never GetComfort.

An air-to-air enquiry from Bexley that qualifies for the grant goes to an MCS-certified installer; a cooling-only job goes to an F-Gas / REFCOM-registered engineer instead, since that is the licence refrigerant-only work actually requires. Mixing the two accreditations up is the mistake we see most often.