The government has committed £15bn to the Warm Homes Plan and it was presented as the solution to cold homes and high energy bills. But for the households we work with every day at the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), the picture on the ground looks very different.

We still do not know what the Warm Homes Plan will look like in practice. Despite being announced in early 2026, full details have not been published. There has not even been a holding statement. Meanwhile we have waiting lists for grant funded retrofit work that are getting longer and longer… For people already living in cold, damp homes and struggling with high energy bills, every month of delay is another month of rooms at an unsafe temperature, high bills and waiting for help that has been promised but not yet delivered. 

A gap in funding, not just in time 

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) provided around £1.3bn a year for home energy retrofit. It was certainly not a perfect programme. It needed stronger consumer protections and better oversight, but it was the largest single source of funding the retrofit sector has had. 

ECO has now been cancelled, officially ending in December 2026. The Warm Homes Local Grant and Warm Homes Social Housing Fund both began in April 2025, but they were never designed to replace ECO at scale. Until the Warm Homes Plan begins delivery, the retrofit sector faces a shortfall of around £1.3bn a year. 

That gap is being felt most by people in the most vulnerable circumstances – those on low incomes, in the poorest-quality homes, who cannot afford to fund energy efficient home improvements themselves. Fewer homes improved means more households left struggling with high bills and conditions that could damage their health. 

Although funding should increase the number of properties that can be retrofitted in the scheme, the split between social housing and privately owned has not been determined.  

Demand is already outpacing supply 

We don’t need to speculate about what insufficient funding looks like. CSE delivers schemes through the Warm Homes Local Grant in Somerset, and we can already see it. 

Those schemes are now at capacity. New applicants are being added to a waiting list, and people applying today will not receive improvements until April 2027 at the very earliest. The waiting list is not a sign that something has gone wrong with delivery, it’s a sign that the need is far greater than the funding available. 

CSE is not alone in seeing this. In Bristol, a new community-based Warm Homes retrofit programme launched in 2025 received less funding than hoped because the scheme was oversubscribed. We think the same pattern is emerging across the country where demand is real, sustained and greater than current funding can meet. 

Even if the Warm Homes Plan launches tomorrow, it is likely to inherit a growing queue of households already waiting for support. 

Where you live still determines what you can access 

Support for home energy improvements has never been available equally across the country, and the end of ECO has made that worse. 

Some local authorities did not apply for Warm Homes Local Grant funding because ECO was already operating in their area. Now that ECO has been cut, residents in those areas find themselves with little or no local support available – not because they do not qualify, but because no scheme now exists where they live. 

Funding levels compound the problem. Allocations in some areas are as low as £1.5 million over three years. Future allocations are based on past performance, so it becomes difficult to grow a small allocation and begin ramping up delivery. This is what’s needed if we are going to grow the supply chain which needs confidence in the levels of allocated funding.

For an advice charity like CSE, one of the hardest conversations is telling someone they qualify for help but there is nothing available where they live. That’s not just frustrating – it’s unfair. 

 Whether households can access support depends heavily on their local authority – the capacity, priorities and commitment of the council and the staff working on retrofit. Unlike ECO, these schemes cannot be delivered independently by the private sector, and outside of social housing, local authorities don’t have a legal obligation to make these schemes available to local residents for home improvements.  

Even where Warm Homes Local Grant funding is in place, households who are lucky enough to have solar or heat pumps installed are not automatically provided with advice and support to ensure they are on the right tariff to suit their new technology or helped to register for the Smart Export Guarantee to ensure they get paid for any energy they generate.

Moreover, most middle-income and working families are ineligible for grants and don’t have access to free independent advice and support to help them navigate their home energy options. The point is that everyone should be able to access advice and support – the Warm Home Plan needs to be about more than just capital grants for low-income households.

The risk has grown, not shrunk 

Since the Warm Homes Plan was announced, global energy markets have faced further instability. The UK remains exposed to international gas price fluctuations, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated. The previous energy crisis triggered by global gas price spikes cost the UK government £43 billion. That figure is a reminder of what is at stake when households and the country remain dependent on volatile international gas markets. The current £15 billion committed to the Warm Homes Plan needs to be understood in that context and it is also a hedge against future exposure.

Every home that is properly insulated and upgraded with low-carbon heating becomes less vulnerable to future price shocks. Improving homes is not only a social policy. It is an energy security question. 

What the evidence tells us

CSE has been working on fuel poverty and cold homes for nearly 50 years. In that time, we’ve seen what happens when funding is available and when it is not. People on low incomes cannot finance these improvements themselves. Without adequate support, they will remain in homes that are cold, damp and damaging to their health, which will impact the NHS.

The solutions are known. The demand is clear. And the evidence exists. What’s missing is sufficient, sustained investment. The Warm Homes Plan must represent new funding, not a reorganisation of existing commitments. Without that, we face a situation where the problem is fully understood and the choice is made not to solve it. 

That would be complicity through inaction. 

The next step 

A fair transition to net zero means everyone can benefit from warmer homes, lower bills and cleaner energy. 

The Warm Homes Plan is an opportunity to make that happen – through local authority-led place-based retrofit schemes that combine grants for lower income homes with independent advice, support and low interest loans for any household wanting to make home energy upgrades. 

Now we need government to match ambition with investment and provide the long-term funding needed to end the suffering caused by cold homes.