Make your home warmer and cheaper to run for free!

The grants come from the UK government and some are funded by the big energy companies. In certain cases the money is allocated to local authorities who are responsible for delivering the schemes.

The idea behind the grants is to save energy, help vulnerable households, and ultimately aid net-zero adoption by 2050.

The following benefits could make you eligible for a grant:

• Income based Jobseekers Allowance (JSA)
• Income related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Income Support (IS)
• Pension Credit Guarantee Credit (PCGC)
• Working Tax Credit (WTC)
• Child Tax Credit (CTC)
• Universal Credit (UC)
• Housing Benefit
• Pension Credit Savings Credit (PCSC),
• Child Benefit

To see if you qualify, head to our eligibility checker.

Currently, we utilise three schemes to help Islanders upgrade their homes:

• Energy Company Obligation ECO4
• The Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS)
• Home Upgrade Grand Phase 2 (HUG2)

Each scheme offers different home upgrades and varies in its eligibility criteria. If you and your home qualify, the grant could cover up to 100% of the cost of a heating, insulation, or solar upgrade. If you’d like more details, get in touch.

The different grants cover a range of upgrades. Various insulation measures can be grant funded as well as heating systems and solar panels.

If you live in a property that doesn’t have gas central heating, you can get grant funding for modern high-heat-retention storage heaters. It’s also possible to have a whole new central heating system fitted, including an air-source heat pump, radiators and hot water cylinder.

Please be aware that not every configuration of house or flat will be able to benefit from an upgrade. You’ll need to take our eligibility questionnaire to find out more.

Absolutely! For ECO4 grants, for example, you can find contact details of energy suppliers participating in the scheme on the Ofgem website. You can also check out gov.uk for more information.

However, even if you’re eligible for a grant, in our experience, it can be challenging to find tradespeople to carry out the work. That’s because installers need to be “PAS” certified to install, commission, and hand over the project.

Typically, most PAS-certified installers you’ll deal with are mainland-based. Many won’t be prepared to take on a project on the Isle of Wight, and the ones that are will have their own unique criteria when undertaking grant-funded jobs.

On the other hand, Future Isle of Wight’s volunteer team all live and work locally, so we understand the unique issues residents face. We can arrange for grant-funded work to be carried out by an appropriate retrofit company and act as an unbiased third party to ensure everything runs smoothly.

An EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) is an easy-to-understand overview of your home’s energy efficiency and environmental impact. It gives a rating of A to G and suggests potential ways you could improve the property.

EPCs are required when a house is sold or undergoes major renovations. They’ve been around since 2007 and each one lasts for ten years before expiry. That means if you have lived in your home a long time, you might not have one. To check, you can go to the government website and search for your property. 

If you don’t have an EPC, don’t worry. You don’t necessarily need one to apply for a grant, but it will speed up the initial process.

Regardless of whether you have an EPC or not, most grants will require an assessment of your home by a qualified surveyor before any work is carried out, so if you don’t have an EPC, we can sort that out for you at the same time.

Most grants take a “fabric-first” approach. That means you’ll only be able to get solar panels once your house is insulated and heated to the required standard.

For example, if the grant surveyor believes that loft or cavity wall insulation would raise your EPC (Energy Performance Certificate), followed by upgraded storage heaters or an air-sourced heat pump, grant money will need to be spent on those measures first.

With all of that being said, we have partnered with a reputable contractor offering full air-source central heating systems and solar panels to off-gas properties through the HUG2 scheme, so we’d definitely recommend enquiring about a grant.

Air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) produce up to 60 decibels of noise on average —a similar figure (in the worst case scenario) to a dishwasher or microwave. 

However, current building regulations require an ASHP to generate 45dB or less if it is situated one metre from a neighbour’s windows. That’s a figure similar to fridge freezer.

Indeed, the sound of a fridge freezer compressor is very close to that of an ASHP (albeit with the addition of a fan), as the two appliances use a similar method of heating/cooling.

For a real-world example of an ASHP running at an Isle of Wight property, click here.

If your home relies on old-fashioned electric storage heaters, an upgrade is definitely worthwhile. Modern units use more advanced materials that are less likely to “leak” heat. They also hold onto warmth for a longer period of time.

For example, reputable manufacturer Dimplex claims that one of their models is “27% cheaper to run than a standard storage heater system, and up to 47% cheaper to run than an electric convector or radiator system”.

Modern storage heaters also have much better controls than old models. Future Isle of Wight have helped people save additional money on their bills simply by educating them on how to use those controls properly.

Future Isle of Wight independently checks all grant-funded upgrades and acts as an impartial guide to residents. If we are unhappy with any aspect of a contractor’s work, we will seek to rectify the situation and potentially stop using that company.

Our eventual goal is to create a trusted, high-quality local supply chain based around Isle of Wight contractors. That’s been a tricky and lengthy process due to the certification required to carry out grant-funded work, but we’re pleased to say we’re making good progress.