The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant for heat pumps has increased to £9,000 — up from £7,500 — for properties currently heated by oil or LPG boilers. The uplift came into effect in July 2026, and it's already driving a wave of homeowner enquiries that MCS-certified installers are well-placed to capture. The question is whether they're actually capturing it.
If you're a heating engineer with MCS certification, this is one of the most significant demand signals your sector has seen in years. But the tradespeople who will win that work aren't necessarily the most experienced or the best priced — they're the ones who are findable when homeowners search for them.
What the £9,000 Grant Actually Covers
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is a government-funded grant administered by Ofgem. It's designed to support the installation of low-carbon heating systems — primarily air source and ground source heat pumps — as part of the UK's net-zero strategy.
For properties on mains gas, the grant is £7,500. For homes currently heated by oil or LPG — which tend to be rural or off-grid properties — the grant rose to £9,000 from July 2026. Given that these properties are often the ones where heat pumps make the strongest economic case (no gas network alternative, high fuel costs), the uplift is well-timed.
Crucially, the grant doesn't go to the homeowner directly. The MCS-certified installer applies for the grant on the homeowner's behalf and deducts it from the installation cost before the customer pays. From the homeowner's perspective, the process is seamless — they pay the net amount after the grant is applied.
This means the installer is at the centre of the transaction. No MCS certification, no grant application. And for homeowners motivated by the grant — which is most of them — that narrows their search very quickly to certified installers only.
How Homeowners Are Searching Right Now
Here's the search behaviour playing out across the UK right now: a homeowner hears about the £9,000 grant through the news, an energy comparison site, or a conversation with a neighbour. They go to Google and search something like:
- "MCS heat pump installer near me"
- "heat pump grant installer [their town]"
- "MCS certified heating engineer [their town]"
- "boiler upgrade scheme installer [their county]"
These are commercial intent searches — people who already know they want the work done and are looking for who will do it. The conversion rate on this kind of traffic is high. These aren't people browsing; they're people ready to book a survey.
The problem for many heating engineers is straightforward: they don't appear for these searches. Their MCS certification exists on Trustmark and MCS's own installer database, but that's a passive listing. It doesn't guarantee Google will surface you when someone searches "MCS installer Shrewsbury" or "heat pump grant Norwich." For that, you need a website that targets those searches directly.
Why a Checkatrade Listing Doesn't Capture This
Many heating engineers rely on Checkatrade or similar platforms for their lead flow. For general boiler servicing and repair, this approach has merit — the platform has brand recognition and drives enquiry volume from homeowners who are already platform-aware.
But heat pump grant enquiries are different. When a homeowner searches "MCS heat pump installer [specific town]," they're not necessarily landing on Checkatrade. They may land on an individual installer's website, on MCS's own Find an Installer tool, on an energy charity's guidance page — or on nothing at all if the local search results return thin or irrelevant content.
A Checkatrade listing doesn't give you a heat pump page for every town you cover. It doesn't let you rank separately for "heat pump installer Shrewsbury" and "heat pump installer Telford" and "heat pump installer Oswestry." It's one listing, in one place, competing with every other contractor on the platform for the same homeowner's attention.
Your own website can rank for all three of those searches simultaneously. And if it's built correctly — with a dedicated page for each location you serve, each mentioning your MCS certification and referencing the Boiler Upgrade Scheme — you're exactly what Google is looking for when a homeowner in that town searches.
The Case for a Location-by-Location Website
Heat pump installation has a natural geographic spread. Most MCS-certified heating engineers cover a radius that might include 15, 20, or 30 different towns and postcodes. Every one of those towns is its own search opportunity.
A 200-page website can have a dedicated heat pump installation page for every location you cover. Each page can explain the current grant amount, confirm your MCS certification, describe your survey-to-installation process, include your contact details, and be optimised for the specific town name. When someone in that town searches for an MCS installer, you have a page built specifically for that search.
This is the difference between a single listing in a shared marketplace and a dedicated presence in every town you serve.
Beyond heat pumps, the same approach works for every service you offer: boiler servicing, underfloor heating, solar thermal, heat pump maintenance and repair. Each service, each location, its own page. That's how a single heating engineer ends up with a website that drives enquiries across an entire region, rather than relying on whoever happens to spot their Checkatrade profile on a given day.
The Grant Is the Hook — Your Visibility Is the Catch
A homeowner researching the £9,000 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant has already done the mental work of deciding they're interested. They've moved past the awareness stage and are in the consideration phase: who is going to do this for me?
That's precisely the moment when your website either captures them or loses them to a competitor who does have location-specific pages ranking in their area.
The Energy Saving Trust, Ofgem, and GOV.UK all publish information about the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, and all of them direct homeowners to find an MCS-certified installer. The question is whether those homeowners then find you in Google, or whether they find the three competitors in your area who have built websites targeting the same searches.
The Timing Window
The increase to £9,000 is recent. Consumer awareness of the uplift is still building. Tradespeople who get locally-targeted content in front of homeowners now — while the news is fresh and before the local search results saturate — will capture a disproportionate share of the initial enquiry volume.
SEO doesn't produce results overnight, but it also doesn't require years. A properly built, locally-targeted website with location-specific pages and correct schema markup begins to appear in lower-competition local searches within weeks of going live, and builds from there. The sooner you start, the longer the compounding works in your favour.
Your MCS certification is the credential that unlocks the grant for your customers. The question is whether anyone in your area can find you to use it.
What the £59/Month Package Includes
For £59 per month, you get a 200+ page website fully built and SEO-optimised for your trade and your coverage area. That includes a dedicated page for every location you serve, every service you offer, and the ongoing SEO work to push those pages up the rankings over time.
No contract. Cancel anytime. A weekly email report shows you where each area is ranking and how that's moving week on week. The site works alongside your word-of-mouth reputation — amplifying it, and putting you in front of homeowners who haven't heard of you yet but are actively searching for exactly what you offer.
With the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant at its highest level and consumer awareness growing, the demand is already there. The only question is whether homeowners in your area can find you before they find someone else.
See what's included in the £59/month website and SEO package →
Sources: Ofgem Boiler Upgrade Scheme guidance; Energy Saving Trust heat pump grant information. Grant values correct at time of writing — check Ofgem's current guidance for the latest figures.