Current Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant amounts, which heat pump jobs qualify, and the quoting rules your business has to get right before you apply.
A customer asks whether the grant covers their heat pump, and the answer changes the price they see by up to £9,000. Get the amount wrong at quote stage and you're either leaving money on the table for them or storing up a difficult conversation when the voucher comes back at a lower value. Get the paperwork wrong and the voucher doesn't come back at all.
This is the 2026 cheat-sheet: what the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) pays today, which jobs qualify, and the quoting rules Ofgem checks. For the full commissioning and redemption workflow, read Heat pump commissioning under BUS V5: a 2026 compliance playbook. For the mechanics of the mandatory upfront discount, BUS V5 and the upfront discount covers it in depth. This post is the version you keep open while you build the quote.
The scheme is administered by Ofgem on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and it's open in England and Wales. The current grant values, per Ofgem's scheme page:
The £9,000 uplift has the tightest conditions, so it's worth being precise about it before you promise it to a customer. The property must be off the gas grid, and not just currently: a property with a record of an existing gas meter point, or a capped or clamped supply, still counts as on-grid. A property attached to a heat network doesn't qualify either. The heating system being replaced must be fuelled by oil or LPG, and new builds are excluded from the uplift.
For an eligible oil or LPG household, the 31 March 2027 cutoff is worth £1,500, and the date that counts is when the application is "properly made": when Ofgem holds everything it needs, including the customer's consent and identity check. An application submitted in late March with the consent email still unanswered can miss the uplift, so don't leave these jobs to the last fortnight.
The install has to be an eligible retrofit. The BUS-funded system must replace an existing fossil-fuel or electric heating system. If the property has a valid Energy Performance Certificate, the certificate number goes on the application; if it doesn't have one, you need alternative evidence of eligibility. New builds are out, with a narrow exception for eligible self-builds.
Photograph the existing heating system on every job. Where there's no valid EPC, photos are part of the alternative evidence Ofgem asks for, and they must clearly show the heat source, its make and model (the boiler nameplate, for example) and where it's located. Ofgem's audit evidence list also includes pre-installation photos of the old system, so take them at survey even when there is an EPC. Once the boiler has gone in the skip, you can't go back for them.
On the technology side, Ofgem's installer guidance sets requirements that catch install businesses out at redemption rather than at application:
One timing rule matters if the install lands before the paperwork does: the system can be commissioned no more than 120 days before the voucher application is properly made. That's your safety margin when a customer signs late.
Biomass carries its own set: rural properties only, never connected to the gas grid, no self-builds, and the boiler must have an emissions certificate.
You can't quote a BUS grant unless your business is certified to install the relevant technology under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme. The certified business applies for and redeems the voucher on the customer's behalf. There's no customer-side application route.
You can subcontract heat pump work. Ofgem's BUS installer guidance allows it as long as the arrangement complies with MCS Standards, and the MCS-certified business that applies for the grant stays responsible for the installation. The subcontractor's work is your work as far as the voucher is concerned. The same certification gate applies to solar and heat pump work more broadly, which do you need MCS to install solar PV covers for solar businesses weighing up certification.
And if your MCS certification itself is due for attention, the MCS audit checklist is the preparation guide.
This is where quoting discipline matters. Under the scheme rules, you must pass the full value of the grant to the customer as an upfront discount, and that discount must appear at the quote stage, before installation, and again on the invoice after it. You must not request or accept payment of the grant value from the customer. Their contractual obligation to you is the net figure.
Ofgem can audit quotes, invoices and payment records against each other, so the grant maths has to be visible on the documents themselves, not implied. A quote that shows only the net price with a footnote about "grant assumed" isn't a quote that shows the discount. The customer needs to see three things: the full cost of the install, the grant as its own named deduction, and the total payable after the grant.
That last point is also why the grant should never be treated as a discount in your own numbers. It changes who pays, not what you earn. Heat pump installer economics breaks down where the margin actually sits across a BUS install, and the 2026 income guide models what the grant does to close rates and job value for a certified business.
For a job that carries the grant, the run order is:
The working-capital gap between step 5 and step 6 belongs to you, which is why stage payments and deposit handling matter more, not less, on grant jobs.
BUS covers heat pumps and biomass only, so a solar or battery customer has no grant to quote. Their case is payback, which solar installer economics works through.
The quoting rule has three moving parts, the named deduction, the net payable, and the invoice matching the quote, and every one of them is a document your system generates. Payaca's grants on proposals feature was built for exactly this: the grant shows as its own named line on the proposal, the customer sees the total payable after the deduction, and the payment schedule rebalances so the customer stages add up to the net figure, not the gross. Profitability reporting keeps the true job value, because a grant isn't a discount to your revenue. If you're running heat pump jobs through Payaca Flow estimates, the grant can be applied automatically and carried through to the full proposal.
Quote the grant correctly, every time
Payaca shows the BUS grant as a named deduction on every quote and invoice, keeps the payment schedule net of the grant, and reports the true job value in your profit figures. Book a 30-minute walkthrough to see it on one of your own quotes.
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The Boiler Upgrade Scheme moved to V5 on 28 April 2026. The voucher mechanism is unchanged - what's new is the mandatory upfront discount on the customer's quote and invoice. Here's how that changes installer cash flow, T&Cs, and template configuration.
The move to the redeveloped MCS scheme starts with a 15-minute onboarding call. What MCS asks on it, who should be on it, and how to prepare.
Real income numbers for MCS-certified heat pump installer businesses in 2026. Day rates, annual turnover, BUS grant impact, and what a 5-person team can realistically earn.
