In a bid to make expensive heating technology more accessible to homeowners, the government launched a new Boiler Upgrade Scheme which is set to help thousands of Brits get a grant of up to £7,500 for a boiler upgrade which aims to encourage more households to replace older gas-fired boilers with energy-efficient electric heat pumps. The government has made £150m per year available to fund the scheme, equivalent to roughly 30,000 vouchers. However, the typical heat pump costs £13,000 to install before any grant, meaning heat pumps still remain out of reach for a majority of households. Clive Holland – broadcaster on Fix Radio, the UK’s only national radio station dedicated to tradespeople – discussed with heating engineers, John Cruikshank and Simon Poskett, about the impact the new scheme is set to have on Brits across the country and the future of the construction industry.

John Cruickshank, said:
“By 2025, no new house builds would have a gas boiler installed. By 2035, the manufacturers of gas boilers will cease manufacture – you’ll still be able to get the parts for years to come, but they will cease manufacture. I believe this is all about to change.

“This is concerning for us tradespeople, there are many mixed signals coming out of the powers to be and us guys on the ground doing the job day to day. We don’t know where we stand. Do we look into renewable technology? Do we stay as we are?

“Scrapping oil boilers is now being pushed back from 2026 to a date we don’t know. The pressure is coming from everybody who pays big taxes, like the big oil giants. The condensing boiler was launched in 2006 which was supposed to be the answer to our energy crisis. We have an energy wastage problem because we were condensing boilers we shouldn’t have been condensing.

“The renewable heating was scrapped by the boiler upgrade scheme – I’ve had a client ring me up requesting a boiler upgrade thinking she needs a heat pump. Even the name is confusing, it doesn’t mean you’ll get a new boiler, it means you could get a voucher or a grant towards a heat pump.

“Many tradespeople are put off by going down the road to MSC because doors just seem to be closing at every chance because nobody knows what’s going on. I say tradespeople should go down the route of renewables as it will be a big part of our heating and hot water. It’s not the silver bullet that we’re all looking for, but with the energy crisis and living standards, it’s very difficult. I don’t know how the government will get 150,000 heat pump engineers trained in time to fit the 600,000 they want because there is no direction. The government initially said if you have a level two in plumbing and water rigs, you could go for a heat pump, yet it took me 18 months to two years to train in heat pumps.

“These are issues we should have been talking about 20 years ago but we’ve now come to a point where we’re approaching deadlines which keep getting pushed back. The government never seems to consider the people who are actually on the ground who carry out this work.”

Simon Poskett, commented:

“The numbers in the first year going into the second, are disappointing with the uptake in the amount of vouchers. I think it’s a third of the vouchers that were available every year were paid out which could be due to the cost of living crisis. The people who are purchasing heat pumps are what we could call the able-to-pay market. There’s more incentive needed for people who are struggling.

“Now, obviously improving heat loss is going to improve your energy bill and usage no end, whatever your fuel source. Better windows, draft proofing, and loft insulations, for instance, are very difficult and expensive to do and probably don’t give you a pay back. Most houses in the UK are sub 10-kilowatt heat loss. We’re coming from a world where we’ve massively oversized combi boilers to provide hot water and it’s easy to heat a house with a massive combi boiler. I appreciate smaller houses are difficult to do, legislation prevents us from putting the heat pump outside. The planning rules are at least 10 years old and really need re-evaluating. We have an advisory team talking to all the right people, but it’s a slow ship to turn around and get legislation through.

“Currently the voucher scheme offers £5000 for air source pumps and £6000 for ground source heat pumps, which is a woefully low figure for ground source because of the capex involved in installing such technology. Now, depending on the house, on average it will cost about £12,000 for a well-performing efficient system, then subtracting the £5000, still leaves you with a hefty cost.

“The legislation and policy really need a clear direction which we still don’t have. Companies aren’t investing, mainly because of the greener policy being kicked into the long grass. There is a very large workforce out there that is currently doing gas, but the training is needed for heat pumps because they’re a very different beast. We’ve got over 15000 heat geek installers now, we’re right at the start of the journey.”