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

The dominant pattern in Oldham is mains gas, at around 93.6% of EPC-certified homes - one of the higher shares in the areas we cover. So for most homes here the grant decision comes down to one thing: whether you are willing to replace that gas boiler with an air-to-air heat pump.

Mains gas heats 93.6% of the EPC-certified homes in Oldham, against 5.4% on electric and 0.6% on oil, LPG or solid fuel, heating a home of the kinds we track locally runs to roughly £595 a year, band D is the commonest EPC rating here, covering 48% of rated homes and this fuel-mix figure covers 99.8% of Oldham's EPC certificates, so it is a real, high-confidence local read, not a national estimate applied to your postcode.

For a Oldham 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 - Oldham Council has no say over your eligibility for it. If your Oldham 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 Oldham 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.