Buried in the Warm Homes Plan, beneath the £15bn headline, is a structural change that may matter more to households than any individual grant: the creation of a Warm Homes Agency to administer the schemes.

Why this is not just machinery of government

Anyone who has tried to get funded work done will recognise the problem it is meant to solve. Support has been split across an obligation on energy suppliers (ECO4), a grant claimed through installers (the Boiler Upgrade Scheme), locally administered funds with borough-by-borough variation, and separate programmes for social housing. Different eligibility rules, different application routes, different bodies to chase.

The practical result was that the households most in need of help were the least likely to find their way through it — and that the gap got filled by doorstep sellers who were very willing to explain the schemes to you.

What to watch for

A single agency helps only if it is genuinely the front door. The things worth watching as it stands up:

  • Whether it covers the transition when ECO4 closes on 31 December 2026. That is the moment when a lot of households currently in the pipeline could fall through a gap.
  • Whether local variation survives. The Warm Homes Local Grant is delivered by councils, and London boroughs differ considerably in how actively they promote it.
  • Whether quality assurance is joined up — PAS 2035, TrustMark and MCS all still apply, and a single agency ought to make those easier to check rather than harder.

The scam risk during a transition

Every scheme change produces a wave of pressure selling, and the closure of ECO4 will produce a large one. Expect "last chance for free insulation" on the doorstep and on social media through the back half of this year.

The tests do not change. Legitimate funded work involves an assessment before anything is fitted, a retrofit coordinator on deeper projects, and a TrustMark-registered installer whose registration number you can check independently. Nobody legitimate needs a signature today.

We are an independent assessor — we do not install anything, so we have nothing to sell you at the end of a survey. Book an EPC or read the full funding rundown.