30-second briefing
The decision in three lines
- Treat 1,096 as the output of an unpublished Care Circle screening model, not as 1,096 eligible care homes.
- Use an MCS-certified installer to test ownership, existing heat source, building type, system capacity and full space-and-water-heating design against Ofgem’s live rules.
- Do not publish a percentage, regional ranking or provider opportunity list until the screening universe, match rate, exclusions, duplicate treatment and frozen extraction date are disclosed.
A screening model can be useful without being an eligibility model. Care Circle’s original analysis reported 1,096 care locations that appeared worth assessing for Boiler Upgrade Scheme support. The figure may be a practical starting point for outreach, but the underlying extract, denominator, match table and rules were not available in this audit. It therefore cannot be independently reproduced or described as a verified market total. The defensible formulation is narrower: 1,096 records were flagged by Care Circle’s house screen for further checks.
The official proposition is real and material. At 27 August 2026 the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is open in England and Wales for eligible residential and non-residential properties. It provides an upfront discount through an MCS-certified installer when an eligible low-carbon heating system replaces an existing fossil-fuel or electric system. Standard support is £7,500 for an air-to-water or ground-source heat pump and £5,000 for a biomass boiler. A £9,000 heat-pump grant applies until 31 March 2027 to qualifying off-gas-grid properties heated by oil or LPG. A £2,500 air-to-air heat-pump grant is available only for residential properties, so it should not be assumed to apply to a care setting registered or assessed as non-residential.
For a care operator, the grant is one input to a wider estates decision. A location must still have a technically suitable design, sufficient electrical and heat-delivery capacity, a workable hot-water strategy, permission from the property owner where relevant, and an operating plan that protects continuity of care during installation. The grant does not certify those conditions and does not guarantee lower bills. The useful question is not ‘Is this care home on the list?’ but ‘Does this property pass the official, technical, operational and commercial checks?’
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Air-to-water or ground-source heat pump | £7,500 |
| Qualifying off-grid air-to-water or ground-source heat pump | £9,000 to 31 March 2027 |
| Biomass boiler | £5,000 |
| Air-to-air heat pump – residential property only | £2,500 |
One grant is available per property. Hybrid fossil-fuel/heat-pump systems are not eligible. Maximum capacity is 45 kWth for an individual system, 70 kWth for a qualifying cascade and 300 kWth for heat pumps on a shared ground loop. Ofgem’s current guidance, not this chart, controls eligibility.
What the official scheme does – and where care properties fit
GOV.UK says the scheme can be used for a home or a building used for a business, and Ofgem describes it as open to residential and non-residential properties in England and Wales. The replacement system must displace an existing fossil-fuel or electric heating system and must not replace an existing low-carbon system. The eligible installation must be capable of meeting the property’s full space-heating and hot-water requirements; a heat pump must be sized for the full space-heating load. Supplementary heating cannot be fossil-fuelled, and a hybrid combining a heat pump with a fossil-fuel boiler is excluded.
There are boundaries that matter to care estates. New builds are generally excluded, social housing is excluded, and the owner cannot use another public grant or Energy Company Obligation funding for the same purchase or installation costs. Biomass is limited to rural, off-gas-grid properties and has additional technical conditions. Air-to-air support is confined to residential properties. An EPC number is requested where a valid certificate exists, but Ofgem permits alternative eligibility evidence where it does not. That makes EPC data useful for screening, not conclusive proof of scheme eligibility.
The process is installer-led. The property owner selects an MCS-certified installer; the installer checks the proposed installation, includes the grant as an upfront deduction in the quote, applies to Ofgem, completes the installation and redeems the voucher. Ofgem asks the owner to confirm consent and eligibility details and may audit an application. A supplier that promises a grant before this process is complete is moving beyond what the official scheme supports.
A location screen is a lead list. Eligibility is a property-specific decision administered by Ofgem through an MCS-certified installer.
What the 1,096 figure means – and does not mean
The original article said Care Circle combined care-location information, service type, bed count, property indicators and EPC matching. Those are plausible screening variables, but they do not reveal the screened denominator, the data dates, the address-matching threshold or the decision rule that produced 1,096. CQC’s directory covers many types of regulated location, not only care homes, and CQC warns that its downloadable files can lag some registration changes while it changes systems. The EPC open-data service includes certificates registered since 2012, including certificates that may have expired or been superseded. A naïve address join can therefore generate false matches, miss valid properties or attach the wrong certificate to a multi-building site.
The count should not be labelled ‘eligible’, ‘qualified’, ‘approved’ or ‘positioned to benefit’. It does not show that the provider owns the property, that the current system is eligible, that the building’s heat load falls within the capacity rules, or that the project is financially and operationally viable. Nor does it show an expected conversion rate. Until the denominator is supplied, Care Circle cannot state what share of care locations the 1,096 represents. Until duplicates and provider groups are resolved, it cannot state how many distinct providers are represented.
A publication-ready dataset note should identify the CQC extract date and inclusion codes; the EPC datasets and certificate-status rule; whether Wales locations came from a separate regulator or other source; the number of source records at each stage; exact and fuzzy match counts; manual-review outcomes; exclusions; duplicate handling; and the final rule used to flag a record. A frozen, row-level output should retain source identifiers and reason codes so that each result can be traced without publishing personal or commercially sensitive data.
The care-property test comes before the sales conversation
Care settings have non-negotiable space-heating and hot-water needs. A competent feasibility review should calculate heat loss and peak demand, profile hot-water use, examine emitters and distribution temperatures, confirm plant-room and external space, assess noise and planning constraints, and test the electrical connection and any upgrade requirement. It should also identify how heating and hot water will be maintained during works. Smaller does not automatically mean suitable: a converted house can still have high fabric losses, constrained outside space or complex hot-water demand.
Commercial appraisal should compare the full installed cost after grant, enabling works, maintenance, expected equipment life, electricity use under a stated performance assumption and the cost of the counterfactual heating replacement. It should test tariffs and demand charges rather than claiming that a heat pump will always reduce bills. For leased sites, the operator and owner need a clear agreement on consent, capital ownership, maintenance and end-of-lease treatment. For multi-site groups, the sensible output is a prioritised feasibility pipeline with confidence levels, not a single national eligibility claim.
Official uptake provides context, not a care-sector benchmark. Ofgem reported 143,650 voucher applications and 90,115 vouchers redeemed between 23 May 2022 and 31 July 2026, with £635.4 million of grants paid. These totals cover the whole scheme and do not establish how many care locations applied or succeeded. A separate care-sector outcome measure would require Ofgem data or a reproducible classification of recipient properties.
A neutral route from screen to decision
Stage one is desk triage: confirm the regulated location, property address, building use, ownership, existing heat source and whether there is a current or historic EPC. Stage two is installer-led feasibility: obtain a heat-loss calculation, system design, capacity check, electrical assessment and a statement of how full space and water heating will be met. Stage three is investment review: compare at least one credible alternative, disclose assumptions, identify enabling works and set out service-continuity controls. Stage four is governance: record who approved the project, what Ofgem evidence is held and how performance will be monitored after commissioning.
Suppliers can add value by making those stages auditable. Useful deliverables include a site survey with exclusions, a grant-compliant quote, heat-load and hot-water design, disruption plan, metering and commissioning data, maintenance responsibilities and a post-installation review. Providers should avoid lead-generation claims that imply Ofgem approval, guarantee energy savings or use the 1,096 count as social proof without the methodology note.
Questions leaders should ask now
- 01
What exactly was screened?Ask for the frozen source files, extraction dates, location types, geography, active-status rule and denominator before relying on 1,096.
- 02
How was the property matched?Request exact and fuzzy match rules, treatment of units and multi-building sites, current-certificate logic, false-match review and unmatched counts.
- 03
Does the project meet live Ofgem rules?Confirm ownership, existing system, building status, prior public funding, technology, capacity and full heat-and-hot-water design with an MCS-certified installer.
- 04
What is the operating case?Test total installed cost, electrical and fabric works, disruption, tariffs, maintenance, measured performance and the alternative replacement route.
The Care Circle view
The Care Circle view
The strongest version of this analysis is not a claim that 1,096 care locations qualify. It is a transparent observatory pipeline showing how many records entered each screening stage, why they were retained, where evidence is missing and what happened after a qualified installer assessment. That distinction protects providers and makes the analysis more useful to the supply chain.
Care Circle should publish the 1,096 result only alongside its frozen denominator and method note. Once those gates are cleared, subsequent updates can report verified outcomes separately: contacted, assessed, eligible, quoted, installed and not progressed, with reasons. Until then, the figure belongs in a clearly labelled house-analysis box and nowhere in an unqualified eligibility headline.
Continuing coverage
Follow the question into the later editions.
Replacing care-home heating: start with the service, then the grant · 9 October 2026
Develop the analysis
Read the connected flagship reports.
Digital continuity: can the care service depend on its systems?
Provider resilience: the capacity, cash and care behind the headline
October cost controls: turn funding, learning and energy changes into a usable plan
Operational assurance: suppliers, equipment and resident voice
Sources, method & limitations
How to read this analysis
This rebuild audited the original WordPress record and taxonomy against GOV.UK and Ofgem scheme guidance, Ofgem operating data, CQC’s official data notice and the government EPC data service, with live grant values and the temporary off-grid uplift rechecked on 1 September 2026. Official facts are stated separately from Care Circle’s house-analysis count and editorial interpretation. No attempt was made to recreate or validate the 1,096 because the row-level screen, denominator and matching log were not supplied.
- The 1,096 count is not externally verified and cannot be reproduced from the materials supplied.
- No screened denominator, Wales data source, location-type definition, provider deduplication rule or geographic breakdown was available. The original copy also referred to children’s homes, which require an Ofsted rather than CQC source in England.
- EPC data can include expired or superseded certificates and does not by itself establish scheme eligibility or technical suitability.
- CQC states that some downloadable directory updates are delayed during a system change; any analysis needs a dated frozen extract and status checks.
- Scheme rules, grant levels and budgets can change. Providers and installers must use current Ofgem and GOV.UK guidance at the point of application.
- Official BUS totals cover all property types and cannot be treated as care-sector uptake.