The short answer is yes, there is a grant, and almost no air conditioning page in the UK mentions it. The longer answer is that one condition attached to it disqualifies most of the people who go looking — so here is the whole position, with the disqualifying condition stated first rather than buried.
The grant exists, and it is £2,500
Since 28 April 2026, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has included air-to-air heat pumps at £2,500. A reverse-cycle air conditioning system — one that cools in summer and heats in winter — is an air-to-air heat pump. This is not a loophole or an interpretation; it is a listed technology with a listed grant value on the scheme’s own published rates.
For context, the same scheme pays:
- £7,500 towards an air source (air-to-water) heat pump — the kind that feeds radiators and a hot water cylinder
- £9,000 where that property is heated by oil or LPG and has no mains gas connection, a temporary uplift running to 31 March 2027
- £7,500 towards a ground source heat pump
- £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump, residential only
The condition that decides your answer
Here it is, and it is the whole game: the system must fully replace your existing fossil-fuel or electric heating system.
Most home air conditioning is added. The gas boiler stays, the radiators stay, and the new system provides cooling in summer and perhaps some shoulder-season heating. That is an addition, not a replacement, and it does not qualify. If you are putting a split system into a bedroom of a gas-heated house, budget without the grant.
Two further exclusions worth knowing: there is no grant for hybrid systems, and you cannot use the scheme to replace heating that is already low-carbon — so swapping an old heat pump for a new one is not fundable. Developer-built new builds are excluded; self-builds are eligible, and if you move into a finished new build that came with a fossil-fuel boiler you may still be able to apply.
The house that does qualify
There is a specific and fairly common home where this grant is genuinely available: one heated by electric storage heaters or panel heaters.
Those households tend to be paying the most per unit of heat for the least comfort, and they often have no gas connection to lose. A properly sized multi-split reverse-cycle system can take over the heating completely — which is exactly what the scheme asks for — and then also delivers cooling in summer that the storage heaters never could. One piece of equipment, both seasons, £2,500 off.
The sizing has to be done honestly for this to work. Taking over the heating means the system must meet the heat loss of the rooms it serves on a cold day, not merely take the edge off a hot one. That is a heat-load calculation per room, and it is the difference between a system that replaces your heating and one that supplements it.
How the money actually reaches you
It does not reach you. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is installer-led: an MCS-certified installer applies for a voucher and the grant is deducted from your invoice. You never receive, claim or reconcile the funds.
That has one practical consequence that is worth more than anything else on this page. The grant route exists only through an installer certified by MCS for air-to-air specifically, because MCS certification is granted per technology. A company certified for solar PV or battery storage is not thereby certified for air-to-air heat pumps, and no amount of general renewable experience substitutes for the certificate. So:
Ask whoever is quoting you to show you their MCS certificate, and read the technology printed on it.
If the grant is central to your decision, that single request settles in one minute whether the quote in front of you can deliver it.
If you do not qualify — which you probably do not
The honest position for most households is that the £2,500 is not available to them, and the useful question becomes what is.
VAT. A permanently fixed unit installed in residential accommodation carries 0% VAT until 31 March 2027, and then the reduced rate of 5% — not the standard 20% that a surprising number of pages still claim. HMRC’s own VAT Notice 708/6 is the source, and the sentence that does the work is its statement that most air conditioning units are air source heat pumps. On a multi-room system that relief is worth considerably more than it sounds, and the March 2027 date is a real one.
Running cost, which is where the money actually is. Cooling demand peaks in the middle of a hot, sunny afternoon — precisely when solar panels generate most. A household with panels typically runs its cooling on generation it would otherwise have exported at a lower rate. Add battery storage and the evening comes off cheap stored electricity too. The grant is a one-off; the tariff and the generation are every year.
And the heating side, properly. If what you actually want is to get off a fossil-fuel boiler, the air-to-water route carries £7,500 rather than £2,500 and heats your hot water as well. Our air source heat pump cost guide sets out what that costs installed, what the grant leaves you paying, and the running-cost caveat the Energy Saving Trust publishes and most installers do not.
For the equipment itself, what the two system types suit, and what a job involves in practice, start with home air conditioning installation, and the pricing anatomy is in our air conditioning installation cost guide.
Sources: GOV.UK, “Apply for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme: what you can get” and the scheme’s approved grant categories and values; HMRC VAT Notice 708/6 section 2.15. Read 6 October 2026. Grant eligibility depends on your circumstances and on survey — nothing here is a guarantee of eligibility, and HCE does not hold MCS certification for heat pump technologies.