The Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays the same grant regardless of where you live, £7,500 for most heat pumps, £9,000 for off-gas oil and LPG homes. But where that money actually lands is far from even. Building on our uptake and rejection report, this piece looks at the regional side of the scheme: which parts of the UK are getting the grants, and whether the installers listed as serving your area are actually based anywhere near you.
- The South East and South West together account for 37.7% of all Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants paid to date, while the North East accounts for just 3.1%. The South East alone has received more than six times as many grants as the North East.
- Wales receives 5.2% of all grants, slightly behind London’s 5.6%, despite very different population sizes and housing stock.
- The gap is narrowing, slowly. Between October 2025 and July 2026, grants paid in London, Wales and the North East grew by around 40%, against 31% to 33% in the South East and South West.
- Independent analysis of MCS’s own installer register found that most installers appearing in a London search also declare themselves able to serve all 11 other UK regions, with the typical firm on that list registered 101 miles away.
- Separate research using the same MCS data found a 10.7 times gap in heat pump installations per 1,000 homes between the best and worst-served UK regions, once population is accounted for.
Where Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants have actually gone
Ofgem publishes a cumulative regional breakdown of every grant paid under the scheme. As of the most recent quarterly report, covering the period to the end of July 2026, the picture across England and Wales looks like this:
| Region | Grants paid | Share of total | Growth since October 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| South East | 17,963 | 19.9% | +33% |
| South West | 16,059 | 17.8% | +31% |
| East of England | 12,250 | 13.6% | +32% |
| East Midlands | 8,761 | 9.7% | +30% |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 8,296 | 9.2% | +33% |
| North West | 7,450 | 8.3% | +37% |
| West Midlands | 6,734 | 7.5% | +32% |
| London | 5,069 | 5.6% | +40% |
| Wales | 4,722 | 5.2% | +40% |
| North East | 2,811 | 3.1% | +39% |
The ranking has held since the scheme’s earliest quarterly reports in 2023: the South East and South West have consistently led, and the North East has consistently trailed. Some of that gap is explained by housing stock: the South West and South East have a higher proportion of older, off-gas-grid rural properties, which face steeper heating bills on oil or LPG and get more from switching. But housing stock alone is unlikely to explain a gap this wide, particularly given London and Wales sit at similarly low shares despite having very little in common as regions.
What has changed is the pace. The three regions with the smallest shares have grown fastest over the past nine months, so the gap is closing in proportional terms. It is closing slowly, though: the North East’s share has moved by a tenth of a percentage point.
Is the installer register telling homeowners the truth about “local” coverage?
A separate piece of independent analysis, published in July 2026 by heat pump installer Elite Renewables, looked at what MCS’s own Find-an-Installer register actually shows rather than what it implies. Searching for a heat pump installer in London returns 1,143 certified firms. Most of those, around seven in ten, also declare themselves able to serve every other UK region. Only a small minority, fewer than four in a hundred, list London as their only service area. The typical firm returned for a London search is registered around 101 miles from the city, and the search results give a homeowner no way to tell which listing is which.
The same analysis found that installers on the MCS register cluster into two distinct groups rather than a spread of local and regional firms: just over a third declare exactly one region, and just over a third declare all twelve, with comparatively few firms declaring anything in between. Read alongside the grant data above, it raises a fair question for anyone in an underserved region: an installer showing up in a search doesn’t necessarily mean one is genuinely nearby, and in regions with fewer grants paid, that distinction is likely to matter more, not less.
Why the regional gap is closing only slowly
The latest figures show the gap narrowing, but at a pace that will take years to make a real difference. Two things work against a faster correction.
First, installer capacity tends to concentrate where demand already exists, so regions with fewer grants paid have less commercial reason for new MCS-certified firms to set up locally, which can reinforce the gap rather than close it. Second, as our uptake report covers, close to a quarter of BUS applications in Scheme Year 3 didn’t result in a paid grant once rejections, withdrawals and expired vouchers are counted. It’s reasonable to expect that leakage rate to be worse, not better, in regions with thinner installer coverage, since delays and scheduling problems are a likelier cause of a voucher expiring before redemption. Ofgem does not currently publish rejection or expiry rates broken down by region, so this is a plausible read of the data rather than a confirmed one.If you’re trying to work out whether an installer genuinely covers your area, our guide to choosing an installer covers what to ask before you get a quote, and our full Boiler Upgrade Scheme guide covers eligibility and how the grant is applied.
Frequently asked questions
These are the questions we’re asked most often about regional differences in the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.
Which UK region gets the most Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants?
The South East, with 19.9% of all grants paid to date, closely followed by the South West at 17.8%. Together the two regions account for more than a third of every grant issued under the scheme.
Which region gets the fewest Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants?
The North East, with 3.0% of all grants paid, the lowest share of any region covered by the scheme.
Does a “local” installer on the MCS register actually mean local?
Not reliably. Independent analysis of MCS’s Find-an-Installer register found that most firms returned for a London search also list themselves as covering every other UK region, and the typical firm on that list is registered around 101 miles away, with nothing in the search results distinguishing a genuinely local installer from a nationwide one.
- Ofgem, Boiler Upgrade Scheme Quarterly Report, Issue 17, published August 2026 (regional data, cumulative to 31 July 2026)
- Ofgem, Boiler Upgrade Scheme Quarterly Report, Issue 14, published 26 November 2025 (regional data, cumulative to 31 October 2025, used for the growth comparison)
- Ofgem, Boiler Upgrade Scheme Annual Report, April 2024 to March 2025 (Scheme Year 3)
- Elite Renewables, “The ‘local’ heat pump installer that is 101 miles away: what MCS’s own register shows”, published July 2026
- Elite Renewables, “Heat Pump Installations by UK Region 2026”, published June 2026