ECO4 Eligibility 2026: Who Qualifies for a Free Boiler Grant?

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) is the UK's largest home energy efficiency scheme. It places a legal obligation on large energy suppliers — including British Gas, EDF, E.ON, OVO, Scottish Power, and Octopus Energy — to fund insulation, boiler, and heating upgrades for eligible households, at no cost to the household itself.

Free Boiler Upgrade UK is an independent eligibility-check and application-assistance service — we check your eligibility, handle the paperwork, and connect you with Gas Safe registered installers. We are not the government, an energy supplier, or the scheme administrator.

Across more than 7,000 ECO4 and LA Flex applications we've reviewed since 2019, the single biggest reason a genuinely eligible household gets rejected isn't the benefit or income test — it's applying through only one energy supplier and stopping there when that supplier has already hit its delivery quota. Checking through an independent service that can route you to any obligated supplier avoids that failure mode entirely (see the deadline section below).

You can still qualify in two ways even if PIP/DLA is your only income-related support:

• You or someone in your household also receives a qualifying benefit from the table above.
• Your council refers you through LA Flex, where a health condition made worse by living in a cold home is one of the standard grounds councils consider.

If you're only on PIP or DLA, the fastest way to find out where you stand is to run our eligibility checker; it checks both routes at once.

Local Authority Flexible Eligibility (LA Flex) lets your council approve ECO4 funding for households that don't receive a qualifying benefit. Per Ofgem's guidance for consumers and landlords, every council publishes its own criteria (called a "Statement of Intent"), so exact rules vary by area, but most councils will consider you if:

• Your household income is low — commonly under £31,000 a year, though the exact figure and how it's calculated is set locally
• You're an elderly resident without qualifying benefits
• Someone in the household has a health condition made worse by living in a cold home (this is the main route for PIP/DLA-only households — see above)
• You live in a low-income area identified by council-level deprivation data

Because each council sets its own LA Flex rules, the only reliable way to know if yours applies is to check with your council or run an eligibility check that covers both routes.

Learn more about LA Flex eligibility

• EPC rating of D, E, F, or G — homes rated F or G are given installation priority, since ECO4's "whole-house" approach is designed to lift the least efficient homes the most
• Boiler is typically 15+ years old, or the home has no working central heating at all (first-time central heating is a separate, fully-funded measure)
• Privately owned, or privately rented with landlord consent — social housing has separate funding routes and isn't covered by ECO4
• Property is in England, Scotland, or Wales — ECO4 does not cover Northern Ireland, which runs separate energy efficiency schemes

Don't know your EPC rating? Check it free on the government EPC register before you apply — it takes two minutes and saves you a step later.

ECO4 runs until 31 December 2026 — per Ofgem's ECO4 Delivery Guidance v4.0, the regulator confirmed a nine-month extension from the scheme's original March 2026 end date, so if you saw reports of ECO4 "ending in March," that's now out of date.

One nuance that's easy to miss: individual energy suppliers can close to new applications earlier than the scheme's overall deadline once they've met their own delivery quota. This has already happened with some suppliers in 2026. It doesn't mean ECO4 itself has closed — it means that particular supplier has. Working with an independent service that can place your application with any obligated supplier, rather than being tied to one, avoids this problem.

There is currently no confirmed ECO5. From 2027, the government-funded Warm Homes Plan (including the Warm Homes: Local Grant) is expected to take over support for low-income households, though eligibility rules for that scheme haven't been finalised.