The £2,500 air-to-air heat pump grant: who qualifies and what is actually happening
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme now offers £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump in England and Wales. Here is who qualifies, how the application works, what the money covers, and why almost nobody has received it yet.
If you live in England or Wales and your home is heated by gas, oil, LPG, storage heaters, or panel heaters, you can in principle get £2,500 off an air-to-air heat pump through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. The grant has been law since 28 April 2026. It is claimed by an MCS-certified installer on your behalf, it needs an MCS-certified product, and the system has to be big enough to heat your whole home, not just one bedroom.
That is the theory. In practice, as of September 2026, the scheme is still being switched on. Installers cannot yet be MCS certified for air-to-air, only one manufacturer has products on the MCS directory, and no grant-funded installations had been completed by July. Here is who qualifies, how the money works, and what to do this winter.
Grant rules, prices, and scheme status correct as of September 2026. Check GOV.UK and the MCS directories before relying on any of it.
What the air-to-air heat pump grant is
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the government grant most people know as "the £7,500 heat pump grant". Until this year it only covered air-to-water heat pumps (the ones that feed radiators and a hot water cylinder), ground source heat pumps, and biomass boilers.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 added air-to-air heat pumps from 28 April 2026, with a grant of £2,500. The regulations define one as a plant that takes heat from the outside air and "uses that energy to heat air for the purposes of space heating". In plain English, it is a reverse-cycle air conditioning unit: the wall-mounted splits and multi-splits that cool in summer and heat in winter. Every wall split reviewed on this site is one, which is why "air conditioning grant" and "air to air heat pump grant" mean the same thing.
The scheme is administered by Ofgem and runs to 2030. For how these units heat a home, start with our air-to-air heat pumps guide.
Who qualifies
Ofgem's wording is the one that matters, so here it is, condition by condition.
You must be in England or Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate schemes with their own rules.
The property must be residential. The 2026 regulations say an air-to-air heat pump "is not an eligible plant in relation to a non-residential building", unlike the air-to-water grant.
You must own the property. The application is made in the owner's name. Private landlords can apply for their rental properties; tenants cannot, though you can ask your landlord to.
The new system must "replace an existing fossil fuel or electric heating system". This is the point most guides get wrong. Some say gas or oil only; others say electric only. Ofgem's property owners page says either qualifies, so a gas-heated house and a flat on storage heaters are both eligible in principle.
It cannot replace a low-carbon heating system. If you already have a heat pump of any kind, you cannot claim to swap it. Hybrids that keep a fossil fuel boiler alongside the heat pump are excluded too.
It must be capable of heating the whole home. Ofgem's installer guidance says the grant-funded heat pump must have "sufficient kilowatt thermal capacity to meet the full space heating demands of a property on its own". Since 28 April 2026 you are allowed to keep non-fossil supplementary appliances (Ofgem lists storage heaters, direct electric heaters, immersion heaters, and hot water heat pumps), but the air-to-air system itself has to be sized for the full heating load. A single unit in one bedroom of a three-bed semi will not qualify. A single unit in a small, well-insulated flat might.
The installer must be MCS certified for air-to-air, and the product must be on the MCS product directory. Both. Being a good F-Gas registered air conditioning company is not enough on its own.
One grant per property. It is £2,500 per address, not per indoor unit. Ofgem will only let you consent to one application for a property.
Capacity of 45kW thermal or less. No domestic system comes close, so this will not affect you.
There is no Energy Performance Certificate insulation condition in the current rules, whatever older articles say.
How the application actually works
You do not apply. The installer does, and this is the part that surprises people.
You get a quote from an MCS-certified installer. Daikin's guidance is that the grant "is shown as an upfront discount on the quote you receive, so you only pay the net price".
The installer applies to Ofgem for a voucher on your behalf, before the work is done (or no more than 120 days after commissioning).
Ofgem emails you to confirm you consent to the application and that the eligibility details are right. You have 14 calendar days to reply.
The voucher is issued and is valid for three months for an air-to-air heat pump. If it expires before the system is commissioned, the installer can reapply.
The system is installed and commissioned, the installer submits the claim, and Ofgem pays the installer. You never handle the money.
Because the installer carries the paperwork and the cash-flow risk, some will build a margin into a grant-adjusted quote. Ask for the price with and without the grant.
What £2,500 is worth against real prices
The grant is fixed, so what it covers depends entirely on the size of the job. These are supplied-and-fitted bands from UK installers and guides published between March and September 2026, all at 0% VAT.
| System | Typical installed price | After £2,500 grant | Grant covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single wall split, standard unit | £1,500 to £3,000 | £0 to £500 | Most or all of it |
| Single wall split, premium unit (Daikin Perfera, Mitsubishi Electric MSZ-LN and similar) | £2,500 to £4,500 | £0 to £2,000 | Roughly half to all |
| Two-room multi-split | £3,200 to £5,500 | £700 to £3,000 | Under half |
| Three to five-room multi-split | £4,800 to £10,000+ | £2,300 to £7,500+ | A quarter or less |
The Energy Saving Trust puts a single-room install at around £1,900 and a three-bedroom semi at around £3,700, inside those bands.
The arithmetic is awkward. The grant would cover most of a single split, but a single split usually will not qualify because it cannot heat a whole house. The multi-split that can costs £4,000 to £10,000, so the grant knocks off a quarter to a third. For a small flat where one or two indoor units cover the full heating load, the grant is a big deal. For a family home it is a useful discount, not a free system.
Our air-to-air heat pump cost guide goes through what moves the price, from pipe runs to scaffolding.
A grant that pays for most of a one-room unit, on a scheme that mostly will not fund one-room units, is a strange piece of design. Plan around a whole-home system and treat the £2,500 as a discount.
Air-to-air vs air-to-water: the two grants side by side
The £7,500 headline figure everyone searches for is for air-to-water. If you want the units that also cool, you are in the £2,500 scheme.
| Air-to-air heat pump | Air-to-water heat pump | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Reverse-cycle split or multi-split; heats and cools rooms directly | Outdoor unit heating water for radiators, underfloor, and a cylinder |
| Grant | £2,500 | £7,500 (£9,000 for oil or LPG homes with no mains gas, until March 2027) |
| Where | England and Wales | England and Wales |
| Property types | Residential only | Residential and small non-domestic |
| Replaces | Existing fossil fuel or electric heating | Existing fossil fuel or electric heating |
| Hot water | No (keep an immersion or add a hot water heat pump) | Yes, via a cylinder |
| Cooling | Yes | No (a few systems can, with fan coils) |
| Typical installed cost | £1,500 to £10,000 depending on rooms | Considerably more, before the larger grant (see our comparison guide) |
| MCS status, September 2026 | Installer certification not yet available; Daikin multi-splits only on product directory | Long established, with certified installers nationwide |
| Disruption | One to three days, no pipework to radiators | Several days, often new radiators and a cylinder |
You cannot have both on one property. If you have radiators you want to keep, air-to-water is the bigger grant and the conventional route. If you are on storage or panel heaters, have no radiators, or want cooling too, air-to-air is the one to look at. We go deeper in air-to-air vs air-to-water heat pumps and in replacing storage heaters with an air-to-air heat pump.
What is actually happening: the status in September 2026
The grant is real and legal. Whether you can get it this month is a different question, and the honest answer is: probably not yet.
Installers cannot yet be certified. MCS's April 2026 update said the installer certification bodies (the organisations that audit installers) were still working towards UKAS accreditation, with "timescales varying depending on CB preparation, readiness, and UKAS resources". It also set the competence bar: every air-to-air installation business needs a technical supervisor qualified to RACHP (refrigeration, air conditioning, and heat pumps) Level 3 or above. On 11 September 2026 trade press reported that UKAS had approved the updated MCS installer scheme, formally bringing air-to-air into scope, with NAPIT and Certsure (NICEIC) intending to apply to certify installers. Certification of actual installers follows once those bodies are accredited. Until then, "MCS certified for air-to-air" describes nobody.
Products only started appearing on 1 September 2026. Daikin was the first manufacturer with air-to-air systems on the MCS Product Directory, through Eurovent Certification: 65 residential multi-split and Multi+ combinations, each pairing one outdoor unit with two to five wall-mounted indoor units. No single splits were listed, and no other brand had products on the directory at the time of writing. If an installer quotes you any other brand "with the grant", ask them to show you the product on the directory.
Almost nobody has received it. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit reported in July 2026 that just 45 air-to-air heat pumps had been supported under the scheme in May, and that "as of July 2026, despite a low number of applications being received, no installations have taken place", because accreditation paperwork from MCS and UKAS was outstanding. The Energy Saving Trust's air-to-air page, updated on 11 September 2026, still describes the £2,500 as "currently unavailable but forthcoming".
None of that means the grant will not happen. The law, the product route, and the installer scheme are now all in place, and the first certified installers should follow over the coming months. But "coming months" is the honest timescale, not "this week".
What to do now
If your heating is broken or your storage heaters are costing a fortune, do not wait. A grant that may take months to become claimable is not a reason to spend another winter on panel heaters at 26.11p/kWh (Ofgem cap, July to September 2026; October's 26.32p is almost identical, see October's price cap). An air-to-air unit at SCOP 4 cuts heating electricity by roughly three quarters, and that saving starts the day it is installed, grant or no grant.
If you can wait, get the quotes now. Use our installer directory and ask each company two direct questions: "Are you MCS certified for air-to-air heat pumps, and with which certification body?" and "Is the exact product you are quoting on the MCS product directory?" Remember the 120-day rule: a system commissioned more than 120 days before the application cannot be claimed, so installing now and claiming later only works if the installer is certified within four months and the product is listed.
Check the directories yourself. The MCS installer search and product directory are public. If a company calls itself "grant approved" or offers "free air con", it is either confused or selling. There is no such thing as a grant-approved installer, only an MCS-certified one, and the grant is £2,500, not the whole bill.
Use the 0% VAT while it lasts. Permanently fixed air-to-air heat pumps installed under a supply-and-fit contract are zero-rated for VAT until 31 March 2027, after which the rate is expected to return to 5%. That is worth £75 to £500 on a typical job, grant or not. Portable air conditioners qualify for neither the VAT relief nor the grant.
Expect a heat-loss calculation. Because the grant depends on the system meeting your full heating demand, the installer has to size it room by room. A grant quote without one is not a grant quote.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get the air-to-air heat pump grant if I have gas central heating? +
Yes, in principle. Ofgem's rule is that the new system must replace an existing fossil fuel or electric heating system, and gas counts. The catch is that the air-to-air system must be able to heat the whole home on its own, so the boiler goes and the splits become your heating, with an immersion heater or hot water heat pump for hot water.
Does the grant cover a single room? +
Usually not. The grant-funded system must have enough capacity to meet the full space heating demand of the property. One indoor unit can do that in a small flat or studio, but not in a typical house. For a house you are looking at a multi-split with a unit in each main room.
How do I apply for the £2,500 grant? +
You do not apply directly. Your MCS-certified installer applies to Ofgem on your behalf, Ofgem emails you to confirm your consent within 14 days, and the grant is deducted from your quote. The installer is paid by Ofgem after the system is commissioned.
Can landlords or tenants get it? +
Landlords can, for a property they own. Tenants cannot, because the application is in the owner's name. If you rent a flat on storage heaters, the practical route is to ask your landlord.
Do portable air conditioners qualify? +
No. Portables are not fixed installations, cannot be MCS certified, and are excluded from the 0% VAT relief too. The grant is only for permanently installed split or multi-split systems fitted by a certified company.
What is the difference between the £2,500 and £7,500 heat pump grants? +
The £7,500 (£9,000 for off-gas oil and LPG homes) is for air-to-water heat pumps, which heat radiators and a hot water cylinder. The £2,500 is for air-to-air heat pumps, which heat and cool rooms directly through wall-mounted units. One grant per property. Our explainer on air conditioning vs heat pumps covers the basics.
Is the grant really available now, or is it still coming? +
Legally, since 28 April 2026. Practically, as of September 2026, no installers can yet be MCS certified for air-to-air, only Daikin multi-splits are on the MCS product directory, and no completed installations had been recorded by July. Check the MCS directories rather than taking an installer's word for it.
Get quotes from local air-to-air installers
Compare F-Gas registered installers near you, ask whether they are MCS certified for air-to-air, and get a whole-home quote with and without the grant.
More winter reading in our heating guides.