ECO4 scheme closure: what replaces it

In brief

The ECO4 scheme closes on 31 December 2026, nine months later than its original 31 March 2026 end date, and no ECO5 or successor supplier obligation will follow it.
The Great British Insulation Scheme has already closed, on 31 March 2026, months before ECO4, and was not extended.
An extra £1.5 billion in grant funding is going into the Warm Homes Plan instead, taking its total committed capital to around £15 billion.

Find which route replaces ECO4 for you →

Five months. That is roughly what is left of the ECO4 scheme, which shuts on 31 December 2026 and will not be renewed. DESNZ has confirmed no ECO5 or successor supplier obligation once the current scheme ends. Anyone who has been waiting on an ECO4-funded boiler or insulation job needs to move now, and anyone who never qualified needs to know where the support goes next.

That gap will not stay empty. Two routes pick it up. A council-run Warm Homes: Local Grant covers low-income and fuel-poor households, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme plus the Warm Homes Loan Scheme cover everyone else. Which one fits depends on income, tenure and whether you can take on any borrowing at all.

Why ECO4 is closing later than first planned

ECO4 was due to end on 31 March 2026. It did not. The government pushed the date back by nine months, to 31 December 2026, giving obligated suppliers time to finish jobs already in progress and, more pointedly, to fix a run of poor solid wall insulation installs that had been flagged as substandard. A remediation extension, not a change of direction.

The Great British Insulation Scheme got no such reprieve. It closed on schedule, on 31 March 2026, months before ECO4 now will. Two schemes often mentioned in the same breath, and as of this year, running on completely different clocks.

What ECO4 has delivered so far

By December 2024, ECO4 had funded 744,200 measures in 226,700 households, mostly insulation and heating upgrades for low-income and fuel-poor homes. GBIS, over a shorter run before its March 2026 close, reached 59,000 measures in 46,900 households, well short of the 300,000-household target it had been set. That shortfall is part of why ministers found nine months for ECO4 rather than a similar reprieve for GBIS: one scheme was closing in on its goal, the other was not.

None of this changes what happens next. It just explains why the two closing dates landed where they did.

Scheme	Closing date	Status
Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS)	31 March 2026	Closed. No extension.
ECO4	31 December 2026	Open now. One extension already used; no ECO5 or successor obligation after this date.
Warm Homes: Local Grant (council-led)	From 2027	Becomes the main free route for low-income households.

What replaces ECO4 for low-income households

From 2027, the main free route for a fuel-poor household stops being an energy supplier obligation and becomes a Warm Homes: Local Grant, delivered through local councils rather than assigned to whichever supplier happens to owe the government a target. The government is backing the switch with an extra £1.5 billion of direct grant funding, on top of what was already committed, which brings total capital behind the wider Warm Homes Plan to around £15 billion. That is a genuinely different funding model. ECO4 costs were levied on suppliers and passed through energy bills. A council-administered grant is paid for directly, which is also why ministers have been willing to call time on the supplier-obligation model rather than run an ECO5.

Our separate Warm Homes: Local Grant guide covers eligibility and what the grant funds in full. Insulation, still, sits there rather than in the loan scheme.

What replaces ECO4 if you do not qualify for a grant

Not everyone locked out of ECO4 was ever going to be eligible for a means-tested council grant either. For that group, two things fill the space instead.

First, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant of £7,500 towards a heat pump in England and Wales, unaffected by anything happening to ECO4. Second, the Warm Homes Loan Scheme. A reduced-rate loan for owner-occupiers and private landlords who can take on borrowing, where a government-backed grant of up to 20% of the loan cuts the rate a lender can charge by up to around 5 percentage points, with public loans expected from September 2026. Size a monthly repayment on the loan calculator before deciding whether borrowing makes sense for your home.

Put simply: ECO4 was free money for people who met the criteria. Its replacements split into free money for a narrower, council-verified group, and cheaper borrowing for a much wider group who are expected to pay their own way, just at a lower rate.

Where landlords fit in

ECO4 reaches private tenants through their landlord's cooperation, but it was never built as a scheme landlords applied to in their own name. When it closes, that indirect route closes with it. The practical replacement is the Warm Homes Loan Scheme for landlords, which a landlord applies for directly rather than through a tenant's benefit status. Not free, the way ECO4 was. But no tenant has to qualify for anything first, which for a landlord juggling an EPC deadline across several properties can matter more than the rate.

If you already started an ECO4 application

The closing date is a hard one. Get any ECO4 application in with your current obligated supplier well before 31 December 2026, not in the final weeks. Installer diaries fill up as a scheme's end approaches, and a survey booked in November has a far better chance of becoming a completed job than one booked in December. If your supplier tells you they cannot fit you in before the deadline, ask directly whether a different obligated supplier still has capacity; it is a switch worth making.

Keep paperwork from any ECO4 survey or quote even if the job does not complete before the cut-off. Some of it, particularly an EPC or a heat loss survey, can carry across to a Warm Homes: Local Grant or Warm Homes Loan application afterwards, which saves paying for the same assessment twice.

A quick way to work out which route is yours

Three questions do most of the sorting. Answer them honestly and the right door tends to be obvious.

Are you on a qualifying benefit, or does your council run a local eligibility scheme you might fit under? If so, start with ECO4 while it still exists. Fall back to the Warm Homes: Local Grant once your council takes over delivery from 2027. Free either way.

Can you afford to repay a loan, even a cheap one, over several years? Then the Warm Homes Loan Scheme and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant are built for you, since neither is means-tested the way ECO4 is. Neither disappears when ECO4 does, either.

Are you a landlord working towards an EPC deadline across more than one property? Tenant eligibility for ECO4 was always a weak link here. One tenant qualifying said nothing about the next. Applying under the Warm Homes Loan Scheme in your own name removes that dependency altogether, property by property.

A household can genuinely straddle more than one of these. A low-income owner-occupier who wants a heat pump bigger than any grant fully covers might use a council grant for part of the job and the Warm Homes Loan for the rest. There is no rule against combining routes, only against expecting one to behave like the other.

Common questions

Is the ECO4 scheme still open?

Yes, until 31 December 2026. That is nine months later than the original end date of 31 March 2026, an extension the government granted so suppliers could finish existing jobs and fix substandard solid wall insulation work. After that date the scheme stops taking new applications for good.

What replaces ECO4 once it closes?

Two things. Low-income and fuel-poor households move to a Warm Homes: Local Grant delivered through their council rather than an energy supplier. Everyone else looks to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant and the Warm Homes Loan Scheme, which lowers the rate on borrowing for a heat pump, solar or battery.

Is the Great British Insulation Scheme still running?

No. GBIS closed on 31 March 2026 and was not extended, so it shut several months before ECO4. If you were counting on GBIS for free or discounted insulation, that door is closed; the Warm Homes: Local Grant is the nearest current route for insulation support.

Does the Warm Homes Loan Scheme replace ECO4?

Only partly. ECO4 was a free, means-tested scheme funded by energy suppliers. The Warm Homes Loan Scheme is a reduced-rate loan you repay, aimed at owner-occupiers and landlords who can afford to borrow. It sits alongside the Local Grant, not in place of it, for those who do not qualify for a free upgrade.

Is ECO4 the same scheme as the Warm Home Discount?

No, and the two get confused often. The Warm Home Discount is a £150 one-off rebate on an electricity bill. ECO4 pays for physical measures such as insulation or a heating upgrade. Closing ECO4 has no effect on Warm Home Discount eligibility or payments.

Can I still apply for ECO4 before it closes?

Yes, if you meet the eligibility rules and get your application in with an obligated supplier before 31 December 2026. Installer capacity tends to tighten as a scheme's closing date nears, so applying with months rather than weeks to spare gives a much better chance of a completed install.

If you are not sure which of the three routes is yours, the funding wizard sorts it in a couple of minutes by asking about income, tenure and the measure you want. Working that out now, while ECO4 still has months left to run, beats finding out in its final week that you needed a different door. For the fuller picture of how all these schemes fit under one roof, see our guide to the warm homes plan.