Air-to-Air Heat Pump Grant for Off-gas homes (oil & LPG)

Off-gas oil and LPG homes: a real option, with two honest caveats

If you heat with oil or LPG, your running costs are volatile and high, and a heat pump is an obvious way out. Air-to-air is the cheapest way in: no wet system to install, a modest multi-split, the £2,500 grant and 0% VAT. Against LPG (roughly 12-15p per kWh of heat) an air-to-air unit at about 6.5-7.5p is a clear win; against oil (about 8.5-10.5p at July 2026 prices, though oil is volatile) the saving is real but more modest. For a smaller, reasonably-insulated off-gas home, or for heating the rooms you actually use, it stacks up.

Caveat one: the bigger grant is on the other technology. This is the honest steer most sites won't give you. If you are off the gas grid on oil or LPG and optimising for grant money, air-to-WATER is usually the better target: it attracts £7,500, and from 21 July 2026 off-gas oil/LPG homes can get a £9,000 uplift on air-to-water and ground-source. Air-to-air is explicitly excluded from that £9,000 uplift and gets only the flat £2,500. So the question isn't just 'which is cheaper to install' — it's 'which grant am I leaving on the table'. For many oil/LPG homes with the space for radiators and a cylinder, air-to-water plus £7,500-£9,000 beats air-to-air plus £2,500. We'll tell you which fits on the eligibility checker and the air-to-air vs air-to-water page.

Caveat two: whole-house adequacy and hot water. Blown warm air rarely heats a large, poorly-insulated rural house on its own through a cold snap, when efficiency dips and defrost cycles cut in. And air-to-air makes no hot water — an oil/LPG home often heats water from the same boiler, so you'll need to plan a separate hot-water solution and make sure removing the boiler for space heating (required for the grant) doesn't leave you without hot water. Air-to-air suits off-gas homes best as a room-by-room upgrade in a smaller or well-insulated property — not as a like-for-like swap of a whole-house oil system.