Rising energy costs have pushed millions of UK households to look for ways to cut their heating bills, and one of the most effective long-term fixes is better home insulation. Recognising this, the UK government launched the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) — sometimes still referred to by its earlier working name, ECO+ — to help households in less energy-efficient homes access free or heavily subsidised insulation upgrades. Understanding Great British Insulation Scheme Eligibility is the first step in finding out whether you can benefit from this government-backed support.
If you’ve heard about the scheme and wondered whether you could benefit, this article walks through exactly who qualifies, what support is (or was) available, how the application process worked, and — importantly — what the scheme’s status is now that it has reached its official end date. Whether you’re a homeowner, a private or social tenant, or a landlord, this guide should help you understand Great British Insulation Scheme Eligibility and where you stand.
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What Is the Great British Insulation Scheme?
The Great British Insulation Scheme is a UK government initiative, administered by the energy regulator Ofgem, designed to improve the energy efficiency of homes that currently perform poorly. Rather than paying households directly, the scheme works by placing legal obligations on medium and large energy suppliers. These suppliers are required to fund and deliver insulation measures to eligible homes through a network of approved, certified installers, making Great British Insulation Scheme Eligibility an important factor for anyone seeking support.
The scheme was announced at the end of March 2023 and formally launched in the months that followed, positioned as a roughly £1 billion programme aimed at the least energy-efficient properties across England, Scotland, and Wales. It was designed to sit alongside the existing Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) scheme. Still, with an important difference: while ECO4 generally takes a “whole house” approach, potentially funding several improvements at once, GBIS was built to deliver a single, targeted insulation measure per home — such as loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, solid wall insulation, or in some cases underfloor insulation and associated heating controls. Understanding Great British Insulation Scheme Eligibility helps households determine whether they may qualify for these insulation measures.
The core aim was straightforward: reduce the amount of heat escaping from draughty, poorly insulated homes, cut household energy demand, lower bills, and make a dent in the UK’s fuel poverty figures — all while supporting national carbon reduction targets.
Where the Scheme Stands Now
This is the most important thing for anyone reading about GBIS today to understand: the scheme has reached the end of its delivery period.
The government’s official GOV.UK eligibility checking and referral service closed ahead of the scheme’s final deadline, specifically to give energy suppliers enough time to complete surveys, finish approvals, and carry out installations before the cut-off. That cut-off was 31 March 2026, which is the official end date set by the government for the delivery of insulation measures under the scheme.
What does this mean in practice?
- New applications through the GOV.UK online checker are no longer being accepted. The tool that let people check their eligibility and get referred to a supplier has been taken offline.
- Existing applications and installations already in the pipeline could still be completed. Energy suppliers were given a window to finish work that was already underway.
- Some suppliers and installers may still take enquiries. Because obligations and administrative processes can vary supplier to supplier, it’s worth contacting your energy company directly if you’re interested, rather than assuming the door is completely closed. Some households have found that suppliers are still willing to carry out assessments for as long as they have capacity within their remaining obligation period.
In other words, if you’re reading this after the scheme’s formal end date, you should treat any online guide (including this one) as background information about how the scheme worked, and treat a direct call to your energy supplier as the only reliable way to find out if anything is still available to you. Government statistics published periodically throughout the scheme’s life show it delivered well over 100,000 individual insulation measures to households across Great Britain during its roughly three-year run, with cavity wall insulation as the most common measure installed, followed by loft insulation and heating controls.
If GBIS itself is no longer accepting new applicants by the time you read this, don’t assume all support has evaporated — the follow-on and parallel scheme, ECO4, plus various local authority and devolved nation grant schemes, may still be open and could cover similar upgrades. It’s worth checking those as an alternative route.
Read more: ECO4 Boiler Grants: Free Boiler Eligibility & Application Guide
Who Was Eligible for the Scheme?
While the scheme was live, eligibility was based on a combination of factors relating to your property and, in some cases, your household circumstances. It’s useful to understand these criteria both to make sense of how the scheme worked and because similar criteria tend to recur across UK energy efficiency schemes, including any successor programmes.
1. Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Rating
Your home’s EPC rating was central to eligibility. An EPC rates a property’s energy efficiency on a scale from A (most efficient) to G (least efficient). Under GBIS:
- Homeowners generally needed a property with an EPC rating of D, E, F, or G.
- Private tenants typically needed a rating of E, F, or G (with the D band being more relevant to owner-occupiers, since landlords in the private rented sector are already subject to separate minimum energy efficiency standards).
If you didn’t know your home’s EPC rating, you could look it up for free using the government’s EPC register, provided the property had been rated at some point (for example, when it was built, sold, or let). If your home had never been rated, a new assessment could be arranged, though this sometimes came with a cost outside the scheme itself.
2. Council Tax Band
The second major eligibility factor was your council tax band, which acts as a rough proxy for property value and, indirectly, for the kind of household likely to live there. The bands accepted differed slightly by nation:
- England: Council Tax bands A to D
- Scotland and Wales: Council Tax bands A to E
This meant that, in general, larger and higher-value properties in the highest council tax bands were excluded from the general eligibility route, with the scheme instead concentrating its funding on more modest homes.
3. Low-Income and Vulnerable Households (Low-Income Group)
Alongside the general eligibility route based on EPC rating and council tax band, GBIS included a dedicated low-income eligibility group, similar in spirit to the “Help to Heat” group under ECO4. This group was aimed specifically at households that were low-income, fuel-poor, or otherwise vulnerable to the effects of living in a cold home.
Households could qualify for this group in a few different ways:
- Receiving certain means-tested or disability-related benefits. This commonly included benefits such as Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income-based Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, and Housing Benefit, among others. Exact qualifying benefits could change over the life of the scheme, so it was always worth checking the current list rather than relying on an old one.
- Being identified and referred by a local authority. Local councils had the ability to identify and refer households they knew to be low-income, fuel-poor, or vulnerable, even where the household wasn’t claiming one of the standard qualifying benefits. This route — sometimes called “Flexible Eligibility” — captured people who fell through the cracks of the benefits-based criteria but were still clearly in need. Government statistics show that a meaningful share of all households helped under GBIS, both across the low-income group as a whole and specifically via Flexible Eligibility, were referred by their local authority rather than through the standard benefits check.
If you qualified through the low-income group, insulation work under the scheme was typically provided at no cost to the household.
Read more: Cavity Wall Insulation Grants: Eligibility, Costs & How to Apply (2026 Guide)4. General Eligibility Group
If you didn’t fall into the low-income group but met the EPC rating and council tax band criteria, you could still qualify under the general eligibility group. In this case, a small household contribution towards the cost of the measure sometimes applied, depending on the type of insulation being installed and the specific offer from your energy supplier, though many general-group installations were also fully funded.
5. Property Type and Tenure
The scheme was designed to be accessible across different types of occupancy:
- Owner-occupiers could apply directly.
- Private tenants could apply, though in many cases landlord permission was required before work could be carried out, since insulation measures (particularly external or cavity wall work) affect the fabric of the building.
- Social housing tenants were generally eligible too, subject to similar landlord consent requirements.
- Landlords themselves could initiate applications on behalf of a property, particularly where they were looking to improve a rental property’s EPC rating to meet minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector.
6. One Measure Per Property (General Group)
Under the general eligibility group, GBIS was generally structured to deliver one insulation measure per home — for example, cavity wall insulation or loft insulation, but not usually a combination of several types of upgrade in the same application. This is a notable difference from ECO4, which can fund multiple linked measures for a single property. Households needing more extensive whole-house retrofits were often better served by combining a GBIS-funded measure with a separate ECO4 application, where eligible.
What Insulation Measures Were Covered?
The types of measures funded through GBIS included:
- Cavity wall insulation — filling the gap between the two layers of an external cavity wall, one of the most common and cost-effective upgrades, and historically the single most frequently installed measure under the scheme.
- Loft insulation — adding or topping up insulation in the loft space, another very common and relatively low-disruption measure.
- Solid wall insulation (internal or external) — a more involved and expensive measure typically reserved for older properties built without a cavity wall.
- Underfloor insulation — relevant for certain property types with suspended timber floors.
- Flat roof and room-in-roof insulation — for specific property configurations where the standard loft measure didn’t apply.
- Heating controls — such as smart thermostats or improved heating system controls, which were sometimes delivered alongside a core insulation measure to maximise efficiency gains.
- Innovation measures — newer or less common technologies that could demonstrate an improvement over standard measures already covered by the scheme; these made up a smaller but still meaningful share of total installations.
The specific measure recommended for a property was decided via a retrofit assessment, carried out by a qualified assessor, which looked at the physical characteristics of the home — wall type, existing insulation levels, loft access, and so on — to determine the most appropriate and effective upgrade.
How Much Could You Save?
Estimates varied depending on the source, the specific measure installed, and the size and type of the property, but improved insulation was generally expected to save a household somewhere in the region of a few hundred pounds a year on energy bills, with some estimates for well-insulated older homes running higher. Beyond the direct bill savings, insulation upgrades also tend to make homes more comfortable to live in day to day, reducing draughts and helping maintain a more even indoor temperature — a benefit that’s harder to put a number on but genuinely valued by many recipients.
The Application Process (While the Scheme Was Live)
For households applying while the scheme was open, the process generally followed these steps:
- Check eligibility. This was originally done via the online eligibility checker on GOV.UK, or by calling a dedicated helpline for those unable to use the online tool.
- Get referred to a supplier or installer. Once eligibility was confirmed (or where a household applied directly through an energy supplier), the household would be referred on for a home visit or survey.
- Retrofit assessment. A qualified assessor visited the property to assess its condition and recommend the appropriate measure.
- Installation by a certified installer. All work had to be carried out by an installer certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) or registered with TrustMark, the government-endorsed quality scheme for home improvements. This certification requirement was there to protect consumers and ensure a minimum standard of workmanship.
- Sign-off and any applicable contribution. Depending on which eligibility group the household fell into, the work was either fully funded or came with a partial household contribution.
Alternatives If You Can No Longer Apply
If the scheme’s referral service has closed by the time you’re reading this and your energy supplier isn’t able to help, there are a few other avenues worth exploring:
- ECO4 — the broader Energy Company Obligation scheme, which can fund multiple measures for eligible low-income and vulnerable households and, at the time of writing, was expected to continue operating on its own timeline separate from GBIS.
- Local authority grants — many councils run their own energy efficiency or warm homes grant schemes, sometimes targeted at specific postcodes, property types, or vulnerable groups.
- Devolved nation schemes — Scotland and Wales each run their own energy efficiency programmes (such as Scotland’s Warmer Homes initiative) which may have different eligibility rules and timelines to schemes covering England.
- Supplier-specific hardship or efficiency funds — some energy companies maintain their own discretionary support funds for struggling customers, separate from government-mandated obligations.
Read more: Home Insulation Grants UK – Eligibility, Free Insulation & Funding Guide Do I need to own my home to qualify?
No. Both owner-occupiers and tenants (private and social) could apply, though tenants typically needed their landlord’s permission before work could proceed, since it involves altering the building’s structure.
Will insulation work definitely be free?
Not always. Households in the low-income eligibility group generally received measures at no cost. Households qualifying only through the general eligibility route (EPC rating and council tax band) sometimes had to make a small contribution, depending on the measure and supplier.
What if my EPC rating is out of date or I don’t have one?
You could check the government’s EPC register for an existing rating, or arrange for a new assessment if your property had never been rated or the certificate had expired.
Can I combine GBIS with other schemes?
In some cases, yes — for example, pairing a GBIS-funded single measure with additional works funded under ECO4, where the household also met ECO4’s eligibility criteria.
Is the scheme the same as ECO4?
No. They’re related but distinct. ECO4 tends to fund more comprehensive, whole-house retrofits for eligible low-income households, while GBIS was built around funding a single targeted insulation measure for a broader range of eligible homes, including many outside the core low-income group.
What should I do if I think I still qualify but the online checker is closed?
Contact your energy supplier directly (particularly if they’re one of the larger, “obligated” suppliers under the scheme) to ask whether they’re still processing enquiries or installations before final scheme close-out. You can also check whether ECO4 or a local authority scheme might cover the same type of work.
How long did installation actually take once I was accepted?
This varied by measure and supplier. Simpler jobs like loft insulation could sometimes be arranged within a few weeks of the retrofit assessment, while more involved work such as solid wall insulation, or properties needing additional surveys, could take longer. Demand towards the scheme’s final months also affected how quickly installers could fit in new jobs.
Did I need to pay for the retrofit assessment itself?
Under GBIS, the assessment used to determine the appropriate measure was generally arranged as part of the scheme process and wasn’t typically charged separately to the household. Any cost implications usually related to the installation contribution in the general eligibility group, not the assessment itself.
Could I choose which company installed the insulation?
Not always. In many cases, the obligated energy supplier arranged for one of their approved, certified installers to carry out the work. You could ask questions about the installer’s certification (MCS or TrustMark) and raise concerns, but you generally weren’t able to pick an installer from an open list the way you might for a private renovation project.
What if I rent and my landlord refuses permission for the work?
Since insulation measures alter the fabric of the building, landlord consent was required for tenants applying under the scheme. If a landlord declined, the tenant generally couldn’t proceed with GBIS-funded work at that property. Landlords in the private rented sector have separate obligations around minimum energy efficiency standards, which was sometimes a useful angle for tenants to raise if a property’s EPC rating was particularly poor.
Were new-build homes eligible?
No. The scheme was aimed at existing housing stock with a comparatively poor EPC rating (D and below for most homeowners, E and below for many tenants). New-build homes are built to modern efficiency standards and would not normally meet the qualifying EPC bands.
What happened if my property has cavity walls that couldn’t be insulated (e.g., due to damp or poor condition)?
The retrofit assessment was designed to catch this. If a survey found that cavity wall insulation wasn’t suitable — for example, because of existing damp problems or wall condition — the assessor would typically recommend against that particular measure or suggest an alternative, since installing insulation into an unsuitable wall can cause damp and other issues rather than solving them.
Did GBIS cover Northern Ireland?
No. The scheme applied to England, Scotland, and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own separate energy efficiency and boiler replacement schemes, run through different administrative arrangements, so households there needed to look at Northern Ireland-specific support instead.
Final Thoughts
The Great British Insulation Scheme played a meaningful role in helping tens of thousands of households across England, Scotland, and Wales access free or subsidised insulation, with cavity wall and loft insulation making up the bulk of the work delivered. Eligibility hinged mainly on your home’s EPC rating and council tax band, with an additional low-income and vulnerable households route that made support available even to some households outside the standard bands.
With the scheme’s official installation deadline having passed, the practical route forward for most people is to check directly with their energy supplier for any remaining capacity, or to look into ECO4 and local or devolved-nation grant schemes as alternative sources of support. Either way, if your home has an older, less efficient EPC rating, it’s still worth investigating what help might be available — insulation upgrades remain one of the most reliable ways to bring down energy bills for the long term, regardless of which specific scheme ultimately funds the work.