INSULATION GUIDE
Great British Insulation Scheme 2026: What Replaced It?
The Great British Insulation Scheme closed on 31 March 2026.
The Great British Insulation Scheme closed on 31 March 2026.
Answer a few quick questions to see which government energy grants you're eligible for. Free, instant results.
GBIS offered up to £3,000 towards insulation improvements for homes in England, Scotland and Wales. It covered cavity wall, loft, underfloor and solid wall insulation, and it was aimed at two groups: people on means-tested benefits and people living in homes with an EPC rating of D or below in Council Tax bands A to D.
The scheme launched in early 2023 as a successor to the messy Green Homes Grant voucher scheme, which had its own well-documented problems. GBIS was simpler. Energy suppliers funded the installations as part of their obligations under Ofgem, and homeowners applied through approved installers rather than filling in government forms. For a lot of people, it worked well.
But it closed on 31 March 2026.
If you're searching for GBIS now, you're probably in one of two situations: you missed the deadline, or you started an application that didn't complete in time. Either way, the scheme is gone. The good news is that the insulation funding didn't disappear, it just moved.
The short answer: it was always time-limited. GBIS ran under a specific set of energy supplier obligations that expired at the end of March 2026. The government didn't extend it.
The longer answer involves the broader shift in how the government funds home energy improvements. Rather than running multiple overlapping schemes with different rules, the direction of travel under the Warm Homes Plan is to consolidate funding into fewer, better-funded programmes. Whether that's actually working is debatable, but the intent is there.
One thing worth knowing: GBIS wasn't cancelled because it failed. It delivered insulation to hundreds of thousands of homes. The obligation period simply ended, and the remaining budget was absorbed into ECO4 extensions and the new Warm Homes: Local Grant.
Two schemes are currently funding insulation in 2026. They work differently, cover different people, and have different timelines.
ECO4 is the closest thing to a direct GBIS replacement for low-income households. It's fully funded, meaning if you qualify, you pay nothing for the insulation work. The scheme runs until December 2026, so there's still time, but not unlimited time.
Eligibility is based on receiving certain means-tested benefits: Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Child Tax Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, or Working Tax Credit. Your home also needs to have an EPC rating of D, E, F or G. If you tick both boxes, ECO4 can fund cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, solid wall insulation, underfloor insulation, and in some cases room-in-roof insulation.
Here's what most guides won't tell you: ECO4 also has a "flex" route. This means your local authority can refer you even if you don't receive one of those specific benefits, as long as you meet certain vulnerability criteria, like having a low household income combined with a health condition made worse by cold housing. The flex criteria vary by council. Some are generous. Others barely use it. Sheffield and Manchester have been active with flex referrals. Some rural councils have barely processed any.
The catch with ECO4 is that it ends in December 2026, and as we get closer to that date, installer capacity gets squeezed. If you think you qualify, check now rather than in October.
This is the newer scheme, and it's the one with the longer runway. It runs until 31 March 2028 and is administered by local authorities rather than energy suppliers. The funding amount varies by council, which makes it harder to give you a single number.
Some councils are offering £5,000 to £10,000 per household for insulation and heating improvements combined. Others are still setting up their programmes and haven't opened applications yet. The scheme is part of the government's Warm Homes Plan, and it's designed to target fuel-poor households and those in the least efficient homes.
Who qualifies? Generally, you'll need to be on a low income (the thresholds vary by area), living in a home with an EPC of D or below, and your local authority needs to be participating. Not all councils have launched their programmes yet. It's worth checking directly with your council, or using our eligibility checker to see what's available in your area.
One genuine frustration with this scheme: the postcode lottery is real. A homeowner in Bristol might get £8,000 towards external wall insulation while someone in an identical house twenty miles away gets nothing because their council hasn't set up the programme yet. That's not great, but it's how it works right now.
Right, so you've read the eligibility criteria and you think you might qualify. Here's what to actually do.
For ECO4, the quickest route is to contact an ECO4-approved installer directly. They'll check your benefits status, your EPC rating, and your property type. You can also ask your energy supplier, since they're the ones funding the scheme. If you're on the flex route, contact your local council's housing or energy team first, as they need to issue the referral.
For the Warm Homes: Local Grant, start with your local authority. Some councils have online application forms. Others want you to phone. A few have outsourced the whole thing to third-party organisations. There's no single national portal, which is annoying but reflects how the scheme is structured.
If you're not sure which scheme you fall under, or whether your income and property qualify at all, our eligibility checker pulls together the criteria for both programmes. It takes about two minutes and tells you which schemes are live in your area.
Something to watch for: some private companies are cold-calling people and claiming to offer "government insulation grants" through schemes that don't exist or through middleman arrangements that take a cut of the funding. If someone phones you out of the blue offering free insulation, be cautious. Legitimate ECO4 installers exist, but so do firms that overcharge the scheme and underdeliver on quality. Always check that your installer is registered with TrustMark and, for newer measures, PAS 2030/2035 certified.
Both ECO4 and the Warm Homes: Local Grant cover the main insulation types. Here's what's available and roughly what each one involves.
Loft insulation. The cheapest and most effective upgrade for most homes. If you've got less than 100mm up there, topping up to 270mm can improve your EPC rating by a full band. ECO4 covers this fully for eligible households.
Cavity wall insulation. If your home was built between the 1930s and 1990s, there's a good chance it has unfilled cavity walls. Getting them filled takes a day, makes an immediate difference to heat loss, and is covered by both schemes. We've got a full breakdown of cavity wall insulation costs and grants if you want the detail.
Solid wall insulation. This is the expensive one. Internal solid wall insulation is disruptive but effective. External wall insulation transforms the look of a house but costs £8,000 to £15,000 without funding. Both ECO4 and the Warm Homes: Local Grant can cover solid wall insulation, but it's subject to survey and not every home is suitable. Victorian terraces with decorative brickwork, for example, often can't have external insulation without planning issues.
Underfloor insulation. Less commonly installed but valuable for homes with suspended timber floors, which includes a lot of pre-1950s housing. Floor insulation costs and options vary depending on whether you've got a crawl space or need boards lifted.
Room-in-roof insulation. If you've converted your loft into a bedroom, standard loft insulation doesn't apply. Room-in-roof insulation goes between and over the rafters. It's fiddly, more expensive, and not every installer offers it under ECO4, but it is technically covered.
An aside: draught-proofing often gets overlooked in these conversations. It's not glamorous, and it's rarely the focus of grant schemes, but spending £200 on draught-proofing your doors, windows and letterbox can cut heat loss by 15% to 20%. Sometimes the boring stuff works best. Anyway.
So here's the practical bit.
If you're on benefits and your home has an EPC of D or below, ECO4 is your first port of call. Contact an approved installer or your energy supplier. The work is fully funded, you don't pay anything upfront, and the installer handles the paperwork. But move quickly. ECO4 closes in December 2026 and the last few months of any scheme are always chaotic.
If you're not on benefits but you're on a low income, check whether your council is running the Warm Homes: Local Grant. Not all are. The ones that are tend to have application forms on their website or a phone number for their energy efficiency team.
If you don't qualify for either scheme, you're looking at paying privately. That's not ideal, but insulation is still one of the best returns on investment you can make in a house. Loft insulation pays for itself within two to three years through lower heating bills. Cavity wall insulation takes three to five. Solid wall is longer, maybe eight to twelve years, but the comfort improvement is immediate.
Open our eligibility checker. Two minutes. You'll see exactly which schemes are live in your postcode and whether your household qualifies.
Common questions