The Home Upgrade Grant has ended — where its applicants go now
The Home Upgrade Grant (HUG2) funded energy retrofits — including solar in many packages — for low-income households living off the gas grid in England. Its delivery window closed in March 2025, and the earlier Local Authority Delivery (LAD) scheme and the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund have likewise been wound into newer programmes. This page maps the old routes to their 2026 equivalents.
What HUG did, briefly
HUG was a council-delivered scheme aimed at the homes the gas-boiler-centred ECO framework served least well: oil-heated, LPG and electrically heated properties, mostly rural, occupied by households on lower incomes, rated EPC D to G. Packages commonly combined insulation, air source heat pumps and solar PV — and because off-gas homes pay some of the highest heating costs in England, the bill impact was often dramatic. Its sibling scheme LAD ran earlier with similar aims for on-gas homes, and the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund did equivalent work for housing association and council stock.
The 2026 successor map
| If you would have used… | Look at this in 2026 |
|---|---|
| Home Upgrade Grant (off-gas, low income) | Warm Homes funding via your council, plus the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme if you own the home |
| Local Authority Delivery (LAD) | Warm Homes: Local Grant — same council-led delivery model, similar low-income and EPC criteria |
| Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund | Successor social housing retrofit funding — applications run by your landlord, not by tenants; ask your housing officer what wave your landlord is in |
| ECO4 / GBIS | Ended 31 March 2026 — see what replaced ECO4 |
Off the gas grid? You remain the priority case
Every version of England's retrofit funding has treated off-gas homes as the highest-value targets, and 2026 is no different. If you heat with oil or LPG, two things are simultaneously true: your heating costs per usable kilowatt-hour are among the highest in the country, and the grant support available to you is the strongest. A £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme contribution towards an air source heat pump, with solar panels added at 0% VAT to feed it cheap daytime electricity, is the closest 2026 gets to the old HUG package — and for owner-occupiers it needs no means test at all.
Low-income off-gas households should additionally push their council on Warm Homes eligibility before self-funding anything. Council energy teams can usually tell you within one conversation whether a live allocation covers your postcode and circumstances.
A warning about HUG's afterlife
Closed schemes have a long advertising afterlife. Pages and adverts still circulate offering to "check your Home Upgrade Grant eligibility" or "apply for HUG2 funding". There is nothing to apply to. Forms like that exist to collect your contact details for resale. The checks that protect you are simple: a real 2026 scheme will be named, current and verifiable on gov.uk or your council's site — our scam-spotting guide covers the rest.