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

About 21.5% of Woking's EPC-certified homes heat with electric storage or direct-electric systems - well above what most areas we cover show. That is worth knowing because the grant rule makes no distinction between replacing a gas boiler and replacing direct-electric heating, so it is likely to apply here more often than the national picture suggests.

The split across Woking's EPC-certified stock is 77.1% mains gas, 21.5% electric and 0.6% oil, LPG or solid fuel, typical annual heating costs across the property types we track here run around £516, band C is the commonest EPC rating here, covering 39% of rated homes and this fuel-mix figure covers 97% of Woking's EPC certificates, so it is a real, high-confidence local read, not a national estimate applied to your postcode.

Whether the grant pays for your Woking 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. Eligibility here is decided nationally, not by Woking Council - the council has no role in the grant itself. Where the outdoor unit needs planning permission in Woking, 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.

We route a grant-eligible air-to-air enquiry from Woking to an MCS-certified installer, and a cooling-only job to an F-Gas / REFCOM-registered engineer instead, because refrigerant-only work is what those engineers are licensed for. Confusing the two is the single most common mistake homeowners make when researching this grant.