Who Can Claim the Heat Pump Grant in Cambridge? Eligibility by Situation
Last reviewed: 2 October 2026
Cambridge has an unusual mix of owner-occupiers, student and professional landlords, listed buildings and oil-heated villages. Here is how the Boiler Upgrade Scheme rules apply to each.
The rules in one paragraph
To claim the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, the property must be in England or Wales and owned by you (as a homeowner, landlord or small business). The new heat pump must replace a system running on gas, oil, LPG or electricity, and be fitted by an MCS-certified installer as the home’s main heating — not as a hybrid alongside a boiler. There is no income test and, since 28 April 2026, no requirement for an Energy Performance Certificate.
That covers most Cambridge homes. The details depend on your situation.
You own and live in the house
You qualify, whatever the age, size or value of the property. The main things to check are practical: room for an outdoor unit, and somewhere for a hot water cylinder if you currently have a combi boiler.
If your home is one of the solid-walled Victorian terraces in Romsey, Petersfield or Newnham Croft, the April 2026 change helps you directly. Before then, an EPC recommending solid-wall insulation could have blocked the grant.
You let a property to tenants
Private landlords qualify on the same terms as owner-occupiers, including landlords of shared houses. Each property with its own heating system is a separate application.
Cambridge’s rental market is large and much of it is older terraced stock let to students and researchers, so this is one of the city’s biggest groups of potential applicants. Things worth knowing:
- Tenants don’t need to apply, but they will need to give access for the survey and installation.
- An HMO counts as one property if it has one heating system.
- Running costs fall on whoever pays the energy bills. If bills are included in the rent, a heat pump on a cheap overnight tariff can cut your costs directly.
Homes owned by the council or a housing association are excluded.
You own a flat
Flats are eligible if they have their own heating system. In practice the questions are:
- Where would the outdoor unit go? You will usually need the freeholder’s or management company’s consent to fix it to the building or place it in a shared garden.
- Is the building in a conservation area? Permitted development covers flats in more limited ways than houses, so check planning before you commit.
- Is there room for a cylinder? Smaller flats sometimes suit an air-to-air system instead, which earns a £2,500 grant.
Your home is listed or in a conservation area
Both are eligible. Cambridge City Council has 18 conservation areas, villages such as Grantchester and Great Shelford have their own, and the area is dense with listed buildings. The grant doesn’t change, but the order of events does:
- The installer surveys and designs the system.
- You apply for planning permission or listed building consent through Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, if it’s needed.
- Once consent is granted, the installer applies for the grant voucher.
Doing it this way round stops a voucher expiring while you wait for a planning decision.
Your home is heated by oil or LPG
Some homes on the rural edges of Grantchester, Great Shelford and the wider South Cambridgeshire villages were never connected to mains gas. They are eligible, and for applications made between 21 July 2026 and 31 March 2027 the grant is £9,000 rather than £7,500, for air source or ground source heat pumps. Cadent, the gas network operator for the area, can confirm whether mains gas reaches a particular address.
You built your own home
Self-built homes qualify if you built them yourself or employed the builder directly, with title deeds and invoices to show for it. Homes bought new from a developer — including on Cambridge’s big growth sites — are excluded, because new homes are expected to come with low-carbon heating.
Cases that don’t qualify
- Hybrid systems that keep a gas boiler
- A second grant where a heat pump has already been funded by BUS or an earlier government scheme
- Social housing
- Developer-built new builds
On a low income?
You might not need BUS at all. The Cambridgeshire Energy Retrofit Partnership, led by Cambridge City Council, funds free insulation, solar and heat pumps for low-income households in privately owned homes rated EPC D to G, through the Warm Homes: Local Grant. Ask Action on Energy Cambridgeshire. You can’t combine the two schemes on the same heat pump.
Next: how the application works or what the grant pays.
See what a heat pump would look like in your Cambridge home
The mechanism is the same in every UK home; the design is specific to yours. Our team carries out a free in-home survey including a full room-by-room heat-loss calculation, identifies the system size and configuration that fits your property, and provides a written quote with the £7,500 BUS grant already deducted.
You'll see the actual figure you'd pay — not an estimate — and the projected efficiency for your specific install.