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

Reading runs noticeably more on electric heating than most of the areas we track: around 24.4% of its EPC-certified homes are on electric storage or direct-electric systems. That matters here because the grant pays just as much for replacing direct-electric heating as it does a gas boiler, so a meaningfully bigger share of homes in Reading than elsewhere may already sit on a grant-eligible heating type without realising it.

Mains gas heats 74.9% of the EPC-certified homes in Reading, against 24.4% on electric and 0.2% on oil, LPG or solid fuel, typical annual heating costs across the property types we track here run around £534, the most common EPC band locally is D (45% of rated homes) and the fuel-mix split above is drawn from 96.5% of Reading's EPC certificates, which makes it a genuine local measurement rather than a national average pinned to your postcode.

Whether the grant pays for your Reading home comes down to a single decision: do you replace your heating, or keep it? We show both outcomes with equal weight, never as a blanket promise.

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. This is a national scheme, so Reading Council plays no part in deciding whether you qualify. Planning permission for the outdoor unit in Reading, if you need it, is a different and entirely separate matter, covered on our planning pages.

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 Reading 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.