Record BUS Grant Applications and Oil/LPG Approval Delays

Oil and LPG grant approvals are taking six weeks or more

Everything used to take about a week. Gas-to-heat-pump applications are still taking around one to two weeks, but the £9000 oil and LPG uplift applications are taking much longer. Six weeks has become six, seven or eight weeks, and the wait is increasing.

This is the wait before the voucher is approved. Allow another two weeks after approval for ordering and delivery of the equipment.

Why are oil and LPG applications taking longer?

Ofgem explained this to me directly. The uplift involves extra checks to establish whether the property is connected to the gas grid.

They are using an external company to check whether each property is on a street that has gas. If it is, they then ask the gas network to confirm whether the property itself is connected.

That extra checking is why the oil and LPG applications are taking so much longer than the standard gas applications.

Customers are having to buy more oil while they wait

I have been warning our customers that the voucher is going to take a long time. Some have had to get more oil in the meantime. Others had already had a delivery.

We haven't changed any of our heat-pump installations to boiler installations because of the delay. But I know of other companies that have.

If your boiler is unreliable or your oil tank is running low, tell us at the start. There are record applications for grants and Ofgem is not coping with the volume. Unfortunately, we cannot book the work as though the voucher will arrive next week.

When can we install after the voucher is approved?

We wait for the voucher to be approved before installing. Allow six to eight weeks for Ofgem, then another two weeks for ordering and delivery of the equipment. That makes about eight to ten weeks in total, with the approval wait still increasing.

• First, the application goes through Ofgem's checks.
• Once the voucher is approved, we order the equipment.
• Allow two weeks for ordering and delivery before installation.

There is an alternative for a customer who wants to proceed before approval: they agree to cover the grant amount themselves if the application is not approved. That means accepting the financial risk, not guaranteeing that the grant will be paid.

I've explained what happens during our heat-pump survey and what happens during the installation separately.

The grant is a good thing. This is a difficult situation for Ofgem.

I think the £9000 grant is a great thing for the industry. I also understand that it isn't sustainable indefinitely. The deadline has brought a huge number of applications forward.

The uplift is currently due to end on 31 March 2027, so it will no longer be available from April under the current timetable. That is the £9000 uplift ending, not the whole Boiler Upgrade Scheme. Ofgem lists the grant amounts and dates; my BUS grant guide explains the scheme.

Ofgem is not coping with the surge very well, but I don't really think it is their fault. The government announced the £9000 grant, and Ofgem has been left to deal with the applications.

It is easy to say “employ more people” or “use an external company”. They are already using an external company. Recruiting people, training them and getting these checks done properly is not something you can sort out overnight.

I don't have a simple answer for what Ofgem should do. It is a tough situation to plan for. What I can do is tell our customers what is happening, explain the wait and make sure they know before they run out of oil.

What the government figures show

The graph uses the original government spreadsheet. September's 9,738 applications were more than twice September 2025's 4,089. Of the September 2026 total, 9,733 were heat-pump applications and five were biomass applications.

These are applications in England and Wales, not completed installations. There were 3,332 grants paid in September, but those payments include applications made in earlier months. The figures do not measure the current approval wait.

The government also recorded 8,107 applications for the higher grant from July to September, out of 25,374 BUS applications in total. That is 32%. The figures show the scale of demand; the waiting times and customer experiences above are what I am seeing in practice.

Source: DESNZ September 2026 release, Table M1.1 and Commentary. Percentage changes are rounded.

The original data

The graph shows all 49 months from September 2022 to September 2026. The record claim has been checked against every month in Table M1.1, back to the scheme opening in May 2022. The full series is below, including the same-month comparison with 2025.

Download the monthly data (CSV) · Download the graph

Source: DESNZ, Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics: September 2026, Table M1.1, Commentary and Notes. Published 29 October; checked 6 November 2026. Ofgem supplies the underlying scheme data. May 2022 covers 23–31 May only. Later releases can revise earlier figures. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Future releases are listed in the government's monthly BUS statistics collection.

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