Warm Homes Loan Scheme: frequently asked questions

It is a UK Government-supported, lender-led scheme that launched on 27 October 2026, run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero as part of the wider Warm Homes Plan. The government does not lend the money. Instead it pays participating lenders a non-repayable capital grant of up to 20% of each loan, which lets those lenders offer you a lower interest rate — up to 5 percentage points below their normal rate for an equivalent unsubsidised product.

Around £300 million of government grant capital is committed to this first phase, which is expected to support roughly £2 billion of private lending for home energy improvements by 2030.

Some lenders are offering 0% Warm Homes loans. It is not a scheme-wide guarantee. The mechanism reduces a lender's rate by up to 5 percentage points, and the rules state the rate can never fall below 0%. So whether you get 0% or simply a reduced rate depends on which lender you use, which product you pick, your loan term and your credit assessment. Compare the lenders listed on GOV.UK.

The scheme sets a cap per measure. Solar PV is capped at £15,000 and electrical storage battery is capped at £15,000 — and they are separate caps. A combined solar-plus-battery project can therefore draw on both. Other measures have their own caps: £20,000 for an air-to-water heat pump, £35,000 for ground source, £7,500 for a heat network connection and £20,000 for a micro-renewable system such as domestic wind or micro-hydro.

Any ancillary work — scaffolding, grid connection, isolators, an EV charger — has to fit inside the relevant cap, not sit on top of it.

The government interest-rate support only applies to loans with a term of three years or more. At the other end, some lenders offer terms of up to 30 years. A longer term lowers the monthly payment but increases the total interest you pay, so compare the total cost of credit, not just the monthly figure.

FCA-authorised lenders that have been approved onto the scheme. Ten were listed on GOV.UK at launch on 28 October 2026: HomeServe Finance, Hometree Finance, The Money Co-Op, Propensio, Secure Trust Bank, Selina Finance, South Manchester Credit Union, Sunsave Energy, Tandem Bank and This Bank. Further lender application windows are planned, so the list is expected to grow. Always check the current list on GOV.UK.

You do not apply to the government. You apply to a participating lender, in one of three ways: directly to the lender; through an installer or retailer when arranging finance for the work; or through your mortgage provider, as secured borrowing. The scheme supports both unsecured personal lending and secured lending — be aware that secured borrowing puts your home at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

Yes — the funding is a central pot and lenders draw from it on a first-come, first-served basis. The scheme rules set out how closure will be handled: the department will give lenders six months' notice when forecasting shows six months' funding remains, then a final one month's notice before grant support stops, honouring loans made during that last month.

Nobody has published a date by which the pot will be exhausted, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can say is that the money is finite, allocated in the order applications arrive, and that quotes and lender decisions take time.

The Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026 — the day after the loan scheme launched — cut around £1 billion of grant funding from the wider Warm Homes Plan, with most of that falling on the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. Press reporting at the time did not indicate that the £300 million of grant capital behind the Warm Homes Loan Scheme was reduced. These are two different budgets and should not be confused. For anything that matters to your decision, check GOV.UK.

Two groups, borrowing as individuals on a personal lending basis: owner-occupiers of existing homes, and private rented sector landlords borrowing in their own name. You must own the property, with or without a mortgage. Lending to companies, trusts or SPV structures is not allowed.

Not as a tenant — you cannot take out a Warm Homes loan on a property you do not own. Your landlord can, though: private landlords are explicitly eligible, and they can borrow separately for each property they own. If you rent and want solar or a battery, the useful move is to put the idea, and a quote, in front of your landlord.

Yes. Any domestic property located in the United Kingdom is eligible — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — and the scheme is designed to work alongside existing schemes in the devolved nations. We install across South Wales.

The scheme itself sets no income-based eligibility thresholds, no mandatory minimum energy-efficiency requirement — so there is no scheme-level 'insulation first' rule — and no restriction by property type. However, individual lenders run their own creditworthiness and affordability assessments and may add their own criteria, and the rules specifically mention that a lender might ask you to evidence an EPC. So it varies by lender.

If you are on a low income, check first whether you qualify for free improvements through the Warm Homes: Local Grant or a devolved equivalent before taking on borrowing.

The scheme defines a domestic property as any building or structure currently used or suitable for use as a dwelling, and imposes no scheme-level restriction by property type. Mixed use is allowed where the installation is principally intended to meet the household's energy needs — running a business from home, short-term lets, annexes and converted garages do not in themselves make a property ineligible.

That said, planning permission, listed building consent, freeholder consent and roof suitability are separate matters from loan eligibility, and we will be straight with you about them at survey.

You cannot use a Warm Homes loan and other government funding to pay for the same improvement. The exceptions are the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and the Home Energy Scotland grant for heat pumps — you can use a loan to cover the installation cost above the grant. Funding for different work is fine. Note that if you have already had an OZEV grant for an EV chargepoint, you cannot then borrow under this scheme to cover that same chargepoint.

No, and not usually. You cannot do the work yourself. For solar panels, battery storage and heat pumps the scheme requires an MCS-certified product installed by an MCS-certified installer, certified for that specific measure, to the relevant MCS design and installation standard. Any EV chargepoint has to be an OZEV-approved model fitted by an OZEV-approved installer. Ancillary work does not itself need MCS certification.

Yes. The rules state that owners of multiple properties may apply for a loan for each property, subject to each lender's own affordability assessment.

Yes. This is one of the most useful features of the scheme and it is explicit in the rules: eligible battery storage covers both standalone battery installations and those paired with solar PV, up to £15,000. You do not need to install solar first, and you do not need to already have it.

This differs from some devolved schemes — Green Homes Wales, for example, supports battery storage alongside solar PV rather than as a standalone measure.

Yes to both. Eligible solar PV explicitly includes the addition of solar panels to an existing installation, and a battery installation quote can include integration with an existing PV system, setting up monitoring or control apps, and fitting isolators, breakers and protection devices.

No. The scheme rules are unambiguous: an EV chargepoint installation must only be made as part of a solar and/or battery installation to be eligible, and EV chargepoints are not permissible as a standalone measure. Pair the charger with solar or a battery and it becomes an eligible ancillary cost — but the charger has to be an OZEV-approved model fitted by an OZEV-approved installer, and its cost sits inside the £15,000 solar or battery cap rather than on top of it.

If you want a charger on its own, we will quote for it as ordinary paid work and say so plainly.

Insulation is not currently an eligible measure for loan funding. Neither is replacement roofing or other structural work needed before solar can go on, nor windows and doors, nor roofing repairs. Air-to-air heat pumps appear in the scheme's cap table at £10,000 but are not currently eligible, because they cannot yet meet the MCS certification requirement. If you need work that falls outside the scheme, a lender can offer you separate, unsubsidised finance for it — that is a normal loan, without the Warm Homes discount.

For a solar installation, a typical quote is expected to include things like scaffolding, temporary safety equipment and the grid connection. For a battery, integration with existing PV, monitoring or control app setup, and isolators, breakers and protection devices. An OZEV-approved EV chargepoint and its associated electrical work can also be included as part of a solar and/or battery job. Everything has to fit within the relevant measure cap.

It depends entirely on your roof, your electrics and what you choose — which is why we survey before quoting rather than publishing a price list. The honest answer is that £15,000 is a generous cap for most domestic solar arrays, and a separate £15,000 is a generous cap for most domestic batteries, so for a lot of households the cap is not the binding constraint. See our example costs page for clearly-labelled illustrative figures.

Neither. Warm Home Loans is an independent installer based in South Wales. We are not the UK Government, not the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, not a lender and not a credit broker, and we do not give financial advice. We design and install the work and give you the MCS-certified itemised quote a lender needs. The loan decision is entirely between you and your chosen lender.

The scheme sets out what lenders must see. Your quote has to be dated within the last six months, addressed to you, issued on company headed paper, show the installer's MCS number, come from an MCS-certified installer, show the full installation address, include an itemised cost breakdown of all improvements, and state the system size in kW. We produce quotes in that format as standard, so you are not sent back and forth.

The lender decides when to release money — some pay upfront, some pay a deposit, some pay the installer after the installation has been verified. After we install, we lodge the completed work in the MCS Installation Database, which generates the MCS certificate. That certificate is the basis on which your lender verifies the job and claims its government grant. The government pays lenders monthly in arrears, after MCS verification.

It depends on what went wrong, and the scheme is deliberately clear about this. Your lender handles complaints about the loan product, affordability and credit decisions, and loan servicing — and under the Consumer Credit Act a lender can also be liable for installation quality and mis-selling issues. Installers, including us, are responsible for installation quality and workmanship, with MCS providing the framework for installer standards and dispute escalation. The department is responsible only for complaints about the scheme rules themselves and will not intervene in individual lending decisions or installation disputes. Lending under the scheme is fully subject to consumer credit law and FCA conduct rules, including the Consumer Duty.

Across South Wales — Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Rhondda Cynon Taf, the Vale of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, and the surrounding area. If you are just outside, ask anyway and we will tell you straight whether we can reach you.

No. A quote is free, there is no obligation, and we do not run a hard credit check — we are not the lender. If the honest answer is that the scheme is not right for you, or that your roof is not right for solar, we would rather tell you that than sell you something that disappoints.