A significant increase to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme lands in July, but households in Northern Ireland remain without equivalent support.
By MyOil Newsroom ·
Summary
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant for homes switching away from heating oil will rise to £9,000 from 21 July 2025, according to Installer Online and the Cooling Post. However, Money Saving Expert highlights that households in Northern Ireland who heat with oil or LPG have no equivalent scheme available to them, leaving them on the outside of the main UK retrofit support landscape. For any oil-heated home, this is worth understanding before making decisions about your heating system.
From 21 July, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant for households in England and Wales who heat with oil or LPG will increase to £9,000, according to reporting from Installer Online and the Cooling Post. The scheme helps cover the upfront cost of replacing a fossil fuel heating system with a heat pump, and this uplift is specifically designed to make the switch more attractive for homes that are harder and more expensive to retrofit.
For an oil-heated household in Great Britain, this is a meaningful change. Heat pumps carry higher installation costs than a straight boiler replacement, and oil-heated homes are often older, rural properties that may need additional insulation or upgrades to work well with lower-temperature heating. The higher grant acknowledges that reality.
If you are considering a switch, speak to an OFTEC-registered or MCS-certified installer who can assess your home properly and confirm what is involved.
Money Saving Expert has drawn attention to a long-standing gap: households in Northern Ireland who heat with oil or LPG have no direct equivalent to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. While the rest of the UK has access to BUS funding, Northern Ireland operates under different devolved arrangements and has not yet introduced a comparable grant for oil-to-heat-pump transitions.
This matters because Northern Ireland has one of the highest rates of oil heating of any region in these islands. A large share of households depend on home heating oil as their primary fuel, yet the main retrofit incentive available elsewhere in the UK does not reach them.
Separately from the retrofit picture, global oil prices have been falling. The Belfast Telegraph reports that petrol and diesel prices in Northern Ireland are already reflecting cheaper crude, and the Belfast News Letter suggested earlier this week that home heating oil prices could approach pre-Iran-war levels within days. However, the Irish News cautions that Northern Ireland drivers and, by extension, heating oil customers may face a weeks-long lag before lower wholesale prices fully feed through to what they pay at the point of delivery.
This kind of delay between falling crude prices and cheaper fills at home is common. Suppliers adjust pricing at different rates, and local distribution costs play a role too.
If you heat with oil in Great Britain, the July increase to £9,000 makes now a reasonable moment to get quotes and understand whether a heat pump is viable for your property. If you are in Northern Ireland, the retrofit support picture remains frustrating, though falling oil prices offer some near-term relief on running costs.
In the meantime, keeping an eye on your tank and knowing when you are likely to need a top-up can help you time orders well. You can check when you might run out or set a price-drop alert to catch a better rate when prices ease further.
Sources
We write our own take and link the original reporting. Figures are as reported by the sources above.
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