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

Off-grid heating is unusually common in Winchester: about 9.8% of its EPC-certified homes run on oil, LPG or solid fuel rather than mains gas. Homes like that tend to have the highest running costs of any heating type, which is exactly why the £2,500 grant - and the switch to an air-to-air heat pump it funds - tends to make the biggest financial difference here.

76.1% of Winchester's EPC-certified homes heat on mains gas, 13.9% on electric and 9.8% on oil, LPG or solid fuel, typical annual heating costs across the property types we track here run around £569, 32% of rated homes sit at EPC band D, the local mode and 99.5% of Winchester's EPC certificates sit behind that fuel-mix split, so it is measured locally rather than estimated nationally and applied to you.

For a Winchester 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. Eligibility here is decided nationally, not by Winchester Council - the council has no role in the grant itself. Where the outdoor unit needs planning permission in Winchester, that question is separate, and our planning pages walk through it.

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.

From Winchester, a grant-eligible air-to-air job is routed to an MCS-certified installer, while a pure cooling job goes to an F-Gas / REFCOM-registered engineer - the licence that covers refrigerant-only work. Homeowners researching this grant mix the two up more than anything else.