Great British Insulation Scheme: Eligibility, Grants & How to Apply (2026 Update)

For three years, the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) was one of the easiest routes to free or subsidised home insulation in the UK. Unlike older energy-efficiency programmes that only helped people on benefits, GBIS opened its doors to a much wider group of households — judged not by income, but by how energy-inefficient their home was and which council tax band it sat in.

If you’ve searched for this scheme in the past few months, you’ve probably noticed conflicting information: some sites say it’s still open, others say it’s closed. Here’s the short version, followed by everything you need to know about eligibility, what the scheme covered, and what to do now.

Important update: GBIS officially closed to new installations on 31 March 2026, and the GOV.UK referral service that let households check their eligibility online closed even earlier, to give energy suppliers time to finish processing existing applications. If you already applied before the cut-off, your installation may still be going ahead — but if you’re only starting your search now, you’ll need to look at the schemes that have taken its place. This guide explains how GBIS worked (useful if you’re chasing up an existing application or just want to understand what you might have missed), and points you towards the current alternatives.

What Was the Great British Insulation Scheme?

GBIS, originally consulted on under the name ECO+, was a UK government initiative designed to improve the energy efficiency of the least efficient homes in Great Britain. It launched at the end of March 2023 and was administered by Ofgem, the energy regulator, though it wasn’t Ofgem’s money being spent — the scheme worked by placing a legal obligation on medium and large energy suppliers to fund insulation measures, similar to how the older Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) scheme operates.

The government set a total budget of £1 billion over the scheme’s lifetime. Rather than handing cash directly to households, suppliers arranged for approved, TrustMark- or MCS-registered installers to carry out the work, usually at no cost to the household, though a contribution was sometimes required for pricier measures like solid wall insulation.

By the time the scheme wound down at the end of March 2026, it had helped upgrade around 100,900 households and delivered roughly 139,200 individual measures. Cavity wall insulation was by far the most common measure installed, making up around 37% of all work, followed by loft insulation (28%) and heating controls (25%). Around 38% of upgraded households fell into the low-income eligibility group.

Read more:Comment calculer un pourcentage d’intérêts simples

GBIS vs ECO4: what was the difference?

People often confuse GBIS with ECO4, and it’s easy to see why — both were supplier-funded schemes overseen by Ofgem, and both targeted homes with poor energy performance. The key difference was in who could apply.

ECO4 takes a “whole house” approach: if you qualify, an installer looks at your entire property and may install several different upgrades — insulation, a new heating system, and more — to try to lift your home’s Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating by at least two bands. But ECO4 is means-tested; you generally need to be receiving a qualifying benefit to access it.

GBIS was narrower in scope (it funded a single insulation measure per household, in most cases) but broader in who it reached. Its “general group” route meant you didn’t need to be on any benefit at all — you could qualify purely because your home had a poor EPC rating and sat in an eligible council tax band. That made GBIS the more accessible of the two schemes for working households who weren’t otherwise entitled to government energy support.

Who Was Eligible for GBIS?

GBIS eligibility was split into two distinct groups. Understanding which one applied to a household determined both whether it qualified and what kind of support was on offer.

1. The General Eligibility Group

This was the route that made GBIS stand out from other schemes, because no means-testing was involved. To qualify under the general group, a property needed to meet two conditions at once:

• An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of D, E, F, or G (homes rated A, B or C were considered efficient enough already and didn’t qualify)
• A location within a qualifying council tax band: bands A to D in England, and bands A to E in Scotland and Wales

Both conditions had to be true together. A perfectly ordinary, mid-value family home with a below-average EPC rating could — and often did — qualify, even with two working adults on a comfortable income and no benefits whatsoever.

2. The Low-Income Eligibility Group

This group mirrored the “Help to Heat” approach used in ECO4. To qualify, someone in the household needed to be receiving at least one qualifying means-tested benefit, alongside an EPC rating of D or below. Qualifying benefits typically included:

• Universal Credit
• Pension Credit (Guarantee or Savings Credit)
• Income Support
• Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Housing Benefit
• Working Tax Credit
• Child Tax Credit
• Child Benefit (subject to an income cap based on household size)

Crucially, the low-income group had no council tax band restriction — so a household in a higher-value property could still qualify if it met the benefits test. This group could also access secondary heating control measures, like room thermostats, alongside their main insulation upgrade, and was more likely to have the full cost of installation covered.

Local Authority and Supplier Flex

A smaller number of households were referred into GBIS without meeting either of the standard routes directly, through what was known as “Flex.” Local authorities, the Scottish and Welsh governments, and energy suppliers themselves could identify low-income or vulnerable households — including those with a gross household income below roughly £31,000 a year, or those with a severe health condition worsened by living in a cold home — and refer them into the scheme even without proof of a qualifying benefit. Around 4,300 of the households helped by March 2026 came through this flexible eligibility mechanism.

General eligibility rules that applied across both groups

Regardless of which group a household fell into, a few baseline rules applied:

• The property had to be in England, Scotland, or Wales — Northern Ireland was never part of GBIS, as it has its own devolved energy schemes
• Both owner-occupiers and private tenants (with landlord consent) could apply; social housing and most landlord-owned rental properties were generally excluded from the scheme in their own right
• Eligibility for a measure never guaranteed that a supplier would actually agree to install it — suppliers had discretion over which projects to fund

Read more:ECO4 Scheme: Eligibility, Benefits, Application & Free Home Upgrades

What Grants and Measures Did GBIS Cover?

It’s worth being precise about terminology here: Ofgem was always clear that GBIS was not technically a “grant scheme” in the traditional sense. Rather than issuing cash payments, it required suppliers to fund and arrange installation work directly. In practice, for most eligible households, this meant the insulation itself was installed at no cost, which functioned much like a grant from the household’s point of view.

Measures typically covered by the scheme included:

• Cavity wall insulation — for homes built with an unfilled cavity, typically from the 1920s onwards. This was the most commonly installed measure under GBIS, and could save a household somewhere in the region of £200–£400 a year on heating costs.
• Loft insulation, including topping up existing insulation that had fallen below the recommended depth of around 270–300mm. Many older homes had only 100–150mm in place. Estimated savings ran from roughly £180–£350 a year.
• Solid wall insulation (internal or external), for older properties without a cavity. This was a more expensive measure and was more likely to require a household contribution, particularly for general-group applicants.
• Flat roof insulation and room-in-roof insulation, for properties where a standard loft measure wasn’t applicable.
• Heating controls, such as room thermostats, available as a secondary measure specifically for owner-occupied properties in the low-income group.
• Innovation measures — newer or improved products that could demonstrate a benefit over standard measures. Around 10,600 of these had been installed by the scheme’s close.

In general, low-income group households were more likely to have the full cost of work covered, while general-group households — especially those needing pricier measures like solid wall insulation — were sometimes asked to contribute towards the cost, with the exact amount varying by supplier and installer.

How the Application Process Worked

While GBIS is no longer accepting new applications, it’s useful to understand how the process ran, both for anyone chasing up work that was already agreed and as a guide to what similar current schemes look like.

1. Initial eligibility check. Applicants typically started by checking their EPC rating and council tax band, then used the GOV.UK checker (while it was open) or approached an energy supplier or approved installer directly.
2. Referral to an obligated supplier. All large energy suppliers were obligated to participate in GBIS, and applicants didn’t need to be a customer of a particular supplier to get help from them.
3. Home survey. A qualified retrofit assessor or surveyor visited the property to confirm eligibility and determine which insulation measure was suitable — for example, checking whether cavity walls were genuinely unfilled, or measuring existing loft insulation depth.
4. Quote and decision. The household received a quote, including any contribution required, and was under no obligation to proceed if they disagreed with the assessment or cost.
5. Installation. Once approved, work was carried out by a TrustMark- or MCS-registered installer, often within a few weeks.

If you have an existing application that’s still in progress, the right move is to contact the energy supplier or installer you originally applied through directly, rather than trying to use the (now closed) online checker.

Read more:UK Energy Grants: Complete Guide for Homeowners & Tenants

What Happened to GBIS, and What’s Available Now?

GBIS’s referral service closed ahead of the scheme’s official end date specifically so that suppliers would have enough runway to finish surveys, approvals, and installations already in the pipeline. The scheme then formally ended on 31 March 2026. Government data show that the pace of new installations had already been slowing in the months before closure, with measure delivery in early 2026 down noticeably compared with the previous quarter, as the scheme wound down.

If you missed the window, you’re not out of options. Two routes are currently worth exploring:

• ECO4 remains open and is scheduled to run until 31 December 2026. It’s more thorough than GBIS was — a “whole house” approach that can include heating upgrades as well as insulation — but it is means-tested, so you’ll generally need to be receiving a qualifying benefit, or be referred through your local council’s ECO4 Flex route, to access it.
• The Warm Homes Plan was launched by the government in January 2026 as a much larger successor strategy, with funding pledged into the billions to cover insulation, heat pump support (delivered partly through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme), and local-authority-led programmes. Full detail on eligibility and rollout was still being confirmed through mid-2026, with delivery expected to ramp up into 2027, so it’s worth checking GOV.UK periodically for updates if this is your main route.

In the meantime, it’s still sensible to check your EPC rating and council tax band, since both remain relevant to eligibility for the schemes that have replaced GBIS

Conclusion

The Great British Insulation Scheme was, for three years, one of the more generous and accessible energy-efficiency programmes the UK government has run — precisely because it didn’t insist on means-testing to reach the households it wanted to help. Its two-tier structure meant that both benefit recipients and ordinary working households in poorly insulated homes had a genuine route to free or subsidised cavity wall, loft, or solid wall insulation, often saving several hundred pounds a year on energy bills as a result.

That window has now closed. GBIS stopped taking new applications ahead of its 31 March 2026 end date, and the scheme has formally wound up, having helped over 100,000 households across Great Britain. If you missed it, the story isn’t over: ECO4 continues to run until the end of 2026 for households on qualifying benefits, and the government’s new Warm Homes Plan is being positioned as the larger, longer-term programme to pick up where GBIS left off. The most useful thing you can do right now is check your EPC rating and council tax band, keep an eye on GOV.UK for Warm Homes Plan updates, and speak to your energy supplier directly about what support — if any — is still available to you.