- Taxes on businesses are very high, plus bureaucratic and paperwork load incurs a heavy cost

- Thus businesses must produce faster shoddier work at higher cost to recover some profit margins

- Everything is too expensive and doesn't work! Nobody can afford it! How could this ever happen?

- People protest and ask for more free money

- Man speaks at pulpit, "Vote for me and you get free money"

- Gets elected

- Spending increases

- Bureaucratic load increases to administer the free money, tax increases

- Repeat from step 1 until bankrupt

Posted by: @bobflux

↑

- Repeat from step 1 until bankrupt

... or collectively take responsibility for our own decisions, including the ones we make in the ballot box, rather than always blaming it in others.  Also accept we aren't 'in control' and never can be in an interconnected world, and that for a whole load of good reasons (and some bad ones) real change takes time.

Not going to happen though, easier to keep blaming everything on others!

Posted by: @batpred

↑

. Some of it is not regulatory, like the concept that we need a qualified electrician to run some comms cables for pump controls may deserve scrutiny... 

No rule that says we do so far as I know.

Like much of the burden, this is self inflicted by some installers so far as I can tell, but not by others.  Mine did the whole job single handedly with the sole exception of the fitting of the 16A circuit and breaker to supply the odu, which was done by a qualified electrician, as indeed it should be.

@bobflux 

My view is that regulation for consumer protection is essential, it just needs to be adjusted as the market momentum increases. 

My experience has been of many companies that cannot respond effectively to a well put together inquiry for a straightforward heat pump install. This means that besides missing opportunities, they erode the value that customers that see it through get. 

May partner and I are disabled and can't work. We would like to get a heat pump, but aren't sure whether to wait for when the full warm homes plan is released. We know there will be low cost loans, but we were wondering if we should wait in case they up the £7,500 grant for people like us. Does anyone know if this won't be happening, and the only extra thing that will be released is the low cost loans? Cheers!

@falesh not a subject I know a lot about, but first, on the BUS grant increase... the government has confirmed plans to increase the BUS grant from £7,500 to £9,000, but only for homes currently heated by oil or LPG, not mains gas. The uplift is expected to open for applications in July 2026 and run until March 2027. If you are on mains gas, the standard £7,500 remains in place and there is no confirmed uplift for gas-heated homes.

That said, the BUS grant is probably not relevant to you at all because you mention you are both disabled and unable to work. Depending on the benefits you receive, you may qualify for something considerably more generous. Low-income households receiving means-tested benefits can (to my understanding) qualify for up to £30,000 in free upgrades through the Warm Homes Local Grant.

The consumer loan scheme you mention is real but not yet available. Details on interest rates and loan terms are still being confirmed and the scheme is not expected to launch until April 2027. Waiting for that specifically would mean waiting the better part of a year with no certainty on the terms.

My advice is to find out which benefit route you qualify for before assuming the BUS grant is the right mechanism and I think that your local council is the starting point for the Warm Homes Local Grant. If you do pursue that route, the biggest issues will centre around quality of work, which we can discuss separately.

Thanks for that. We actually got a warm homes local grand. They installed solar and a battery, but said we didn't qualify for a heat pump for some reason. The solar and battery are amazing though. The silver lining is that we get to pick our heat pump installer to make sure we get a proper job done.

Posted by: @editor

↑

@falesh not a subject I know a lot about, but first, on the BUS grant increase... the government has confirmed plans to increase the BUS grant from £7,500 to £9,000, but only for homes currently heated by oil or LPG, not mains gas. The uplift is expected to open for applications in July 2026 and run until March 2027. If you are on mains gas, the standard £7,500 remains in place and there is no confirmed uplift for gas-heated homes.

That said, the BUS grant is probably not relevant to you at all because you mention you are both disabled and unable to work. Depending on the benefits you receive, you may qualify for something considerably more generous. Low-income households receiving means-tested benefits can (to my understanding) qualify for up to £30,000 in free upgrades through the Warm Homes Local Grant.

The consumer loan scheme you mention is real but not yet available. Details on interest rates and loan terms are still being confirmed and the scheme is not expected to launch until April 2027. Waiting for that specifically would mean waiting the better part of a year with no certainty on the terms.

My advice is to find out which benefit route you qualify for before assuming the BUS grant is the right mechanism and I think that your local council is the starting point for the Warm Homes Local Grant. If you do pursue that route, the biggest issues will centre around quality of work, which we can discuss separately.

I expect the universal boiler upgrade scheme grants will gradually be reduced to be replaced by the consumer loan scheme over time as the BUS will be unaffordable once the heat pump migration really scales up. There is no sign currently that Ed Milliband will be given enough money to keep it so generous at scale. 

Be interesting to see what Andy Burnham does if he gets in as his immediate short term priority will be the universal cost on of living crises generally. 

It feels like installing a heat pump before April 2027 would be a good idea just in case the rules get tweaked, particularly for relatively wealthy households. 

Posted by: @jamespa

↑

Posted by: @batpred

↑

. Some of it is not regulatory, like the concept that we need a qualified electrician to run some comms cables for pump controls may deserve scrutiny... 

No rule that says we do so far as I know.

Agree it could sometimes be self inflicted, but I also saw it in some heatpump installation manuals.. 

Posted by: @jeff

↑

I expect the universal boiler upgrade scheme grants will gradually be reduced to be replaced by the consumer loan scheme over time as the BUS will be unaffordable once the heat pump migration really scales up. There is no sign currently that Ed Milliband will be given enough money to keep it so generous at scale. 

That looks like the direction the policy makers are heading, but I think in reality it won't happen, the extra cost of a heat-pump compared to a simple boiler replacement is still far too high, for most households it's going to be £10,000+ without the grant, which is a huge additional cost. It might work if the heat pump was providing some chunky savings in energy costs to help payback the loan and justify the case for the upfront cost, but with the running costs being pretty similar, I doubt it will convince most households to switch.

It's going to need a huge effort to drive down the cost of heat pump installations, and some new thinking to simplify the installations.

@temperature_gradient

In the current markey, my advice continues to be to invest in a battery first, to enable accessing overnight electricity rates. After enjoying some of those savings, a heatpump with more battery capacity is the obvious next step.

I cannot see how the gov can reach net0 targets by continuing to subsidise gas (once emissions are considered). Unless someone is keeping those long promised carbon sink factories well out of public view (and why would anyone hide them?), gas prices will need significant hikes.