Rushmoor · Hart · Basingstoke and Deane · East Hampshire
Solar Panel Grants Hampshire: What You Can Actually Get
What exists for homes in Farnborough, Aldershot, Fleet, Basingstoke, Alton and Petersfield, who each route is for, where the queue stands, and the VAT saving every home installation gets.
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Solar panel grants in Hampshire exist, but they are narrower than the word “grant” suggests. There is no general grant for solar on a home in Farnborough, Fleet, Basingstoke or Alton, and nobody can honestly promise a fully funded system without asking about your income, your home’s EPC rating and who owns it. What does exist is real: one income-linked grant, delivered for all four of our Hampshire councils by a Portsmouth-led consortium with a waiting list; an energy company scheme that ends on 31 December 2026; a lower-interest loan; a couple of small council grants; a group-buy with no round open; and a 0% VAT rate on every residential installation.
HCE installs; it does not award money. Home Comfort Enterprises has no role in Warmer Homes, ECO4 or any council grant, and no installer can decide whether you are eligible for them. Each route below is described as its own source put it on 19 October 2026, unless another date is given; what we install, and where, is on our main solar panels Hampshire page.
Quick answer
Solar panel grants in Hampshire, in short:
- No general grant pays for solar on an ordinary Hampshire home; the funded routes are income-linked and the Warm Homes grant has a waiting list
- Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire all belong to the Portsmouth-led consortium GOV.UK lists with £34,807,254, delivered as Warmer Homes
- On 19 October 2026 Warmer Homes said it was oversubscribed and was adding new applicants to a waiting list
- Switch Together (formerly Solar Together) was not active in any of the four council areas on 19 October 2026; no round dates are published
- ECO4 is income-linked and runs until 31 December 2026; the Warm Homes Loan Scheme is lower-interest borrowing, not a grant
- 0% VAT applies to every residential solar panel and battery installation in Hampshire until 31 March 2027, then 5% from 1 April 2027
Sources: Switch Together, Warmer Homes, Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire councils, GOV.UK, Ofgem and HMRC, read 19 October 2026.
Who Hampshire’s funded routes are written for
For the Warm Homes: Local Grant, GOV.UK sets the national gate: the home must be in England, privately owned (by you or your landlord) and rated EPC D, E, F or G, and household income must usually be £36,000 a year or less, unless an eligible postcode or certain benefits apply. DESNZ’s guidance funds a battery only alongside solar PV, never on its own. Warmer Homes lists solar panels among the upgrades it offers, and Hart District Council’s page says households can receive solar panels, battery storage, insulation and air-source heat pumps.
The EPC test cuts across Hampshire in an unexpected place. The ONS puts the median home at 71, band C, in all four of our districts, so a typical home would not pass. But the median detached house scores 68 in Basingstoke and Deane, East Hampshire and Hart and 66 in Rushmoor, all band D, and detached houses are the commonest home in Hart and East Hampshire. Ownership is the other half of the test: 75.7% of Hart’s households and 73% of East Hampshire’s owned their home at the 2021 Census, against 60.5% in Rushmoor, where 21.5% rented privately. GOV.UK’s wording is a home privately owned by you or your landlord, and we read that as not covering social housing, which is 17.9% of Basingstoke and Deane’s households and 16.2% of Rushmoor’s: if you rent from a housing association, ask your landlord about improvements instead.
The Warm Homes: Local Grant in Hampshire, council by council
GOV.UK’s list, updated 2 July 2026, gives Portsmouth £34,807,254 as lead of a 31-council consortium that runs from the Isle of Wight to Milton Keynes, and Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire are all on it. Hampshire County Council has no entry of its own. Delivery is through Warmer Homes, which on 19 October 2026 said the scheme was currently oversubscribed and new applicants would be added to its waiting list. Read that as “income-linked, for eligible households, with a wait”, not as a closed door. Each council points to it differently:
- Basingstoke and Deane (Basingstoke). The council’s energy-efficiency page says the scheme is currently oversubscribed and that you can still register interest with Warmer Homes. It also lists a council Homeowner Grant of up to £3,000 for homeowners on means-tested benefits in council tax bands A to E, for measures that include “renewable energy measures”; the page does not name solar panels, so ask the council before counting on it for panels.
- Hart (Fleet). Hart’s Warm Homes grant page, last reviewed 19 August 2025, sends residents to register interest with Warmer Homes and names solar panels and battery storage among the measures.
- Rushmoor (Farnborough and Aldershot). Rushmoor’s energy-efficiency page signposts the Warmer Homes programme, alongside Hampshire County Council’s Hitting the Cold Spots advice service and discretionary council home improvement grants of up to £5,000 for households on a means-tested benefit or low income. The page does not describe those council grants as covering solar.
- East Hampshire (Alton and Petersfield). The council encourages eligible households, mainly low-income families, to apply through Warmer Homes, and offers COSY loans, when funds are available, to households that do not qualify for grants. Our guide to battery grants and schemes in Alton takes the Alton side further, including the impartial home energy surveys Energy Alton offers at no charge.
Solar Together Hampshire: a group-buy, not a grant
Hampshire County Council ran Solar Together with iChoosr, a group-buying specialist: pre-vetted installers bid in a reverse auction, and households who register get a pooled offer for solar and battery storage that they are under no obligation to accept. By the county’s own figure it had put more than 28,400 panels on Hampshire homes by August 2024. Hart District Council ran rounds locally as Solar Together Hart, and the most recent had closed to new registrations when we read Hart’s page in July 2026. The household still pays for the system, at the pooled price.
The scheme now trades as Switch Together, and the old Solar Together Hampshire address redirects to its Hampshire page, which on 19 October 2026 gave no round status. Its district pages were clearer: those for Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire each said it was not active in the area and invited residents to register to be told when the next scheme launches. The county council’s own Solar Together pages returned an access block to our reads on 19 October 2026, so we have not confirmed anything newer from them. If a Hampshire round reopens, compare its offer line by line against a survey quote for the same roof, as our guide to what is in a solar quote, line by line sets out.
ECO4 and the Warm Homes Loan for Hampshire homes
Ofgem says ECO4 applies to measures installed from 1 April 2022 and will run until 31 December 2026, following a nine-month extension. It is funded by energy suppliers, not by Hampshire’s councils, and it is income-linked, not a general offer. Basingstoke and Deane’s grants page adds a practical warning: installers who say they work under ECO must be TrustMark accredited with a registration number, so ask to see their credentials before agreeing to anything.
The other government route is borrowing, through the Warm Homes Loan Scheme. Its rules cap loans at £15,000 for solar PV and £15,000 for a battery, and government pays participating lenders up to 20% of the loan amount to bring the interest rate down, with an initial consumer launch phase from September 2026. That makes it a lower-interest loan, not an interest-free one, and we have not verified which lenders are taking Hampshire applications; check GOV.UK for participating lenders. East Hampshire’s COSY loans are a separate council product, offered when funds are available.
Want a Hampshire quote to hold against any offer?
Grant or no grant, a no-obligation survey gives you an itemised written quote for your roof in Farnborough, Aldershot, Fleet, Basingstoke, Alton or Petersfield.
0% VAT and export payments on Hampshire installations
The 0% VAT rate is the help every Hampshire household gets without applying. Under HMRC VAT Notice 708/6, a residential solar panel or battery installation is zero-rated until 31 March 2027, then 5% from 1 April 2027, and a battery fitted on its own counts. The rate is the same whether the system comes from a reopened Switch Together round or from an independent quote; VAT on solar panels and batteries covers the edge cases.
Payments for exported electricity come from your supplier under the Smart Export Guarantee, not from any grant, and the rates are set by each supplier and must be above zero — they change on short notice, which is why we never print one. A Fleet roof, at about 3,974 kWh a year on PVGIS for an unshaded due-south 4 kWp array, exports whatever the house is not using at that moment. To be paid you need an MCS-certified installation; HCE’s MCS certification for solar PV and battery storage is held via NAPIT (member 73495). A battery changes the export share, as our battery storage page explains.
Grant offers in Hampshire: what to check first
Hampshire households still get calls and leaflets promising “free solar panels”. The honest translation is “no upfront cost if your household meets a scheme’s income, EPC and ownership tests, usually after a wait”. Here that means the Warm Homes: Local Grant through Warmer Homes, or ECO4 until 31 December 2026.
- Ask which scheme is paying, by name. “A government scheme” is not an answer, and neither is “the council”: none of our four Hampshire councils delivers the Warm Homes grant itself.
- The queue is not an installer’s. Warmer Homes holds the waiting list for Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire. An installer cannot sell you a place on it.
- Check the planning position too. A grant does not settle planning. In Basingstoke’s Town Centre, Fairfields, South View and Brookvale West conservation areas the council says solar panels, including on the roof, need planning permission; our guide to planning permission for solar panels in Hampshire covers the rest of the county.
- Check the installer’s registers. We are NAPIT member 73495 and HIES Consumer Code member HCE/A/1392.
What a Hampshire roof earns without a grant
Without a grant, the sums start with the roof. For scale, DESNZ records about 7,356 solar PV installations of every size across East Hampshire, 5,437 across Basingstoke and Deane, 3,868 across Hart and 1,998 across Rushmoor at the end of 2025, as first published. For an unshaded roof at 4 kWp, 35° tilt, due south, 14% system losses, building-mounted, PVGIS 5.3 (European Commission Joint Research Centre) gives about 4,128 kWh a year in Petersfield, 4,023 in Basingstoke, 3,974 in Fleet, 4,044 in Alton, 3,970 in Aldershot and 3,971 in Farnborough. By our arithmetic the spread across those six town points is about 158 kWh, so roof direction and shade still matter more than which Hampshire town you live in.
For the price itself, the Energy Saving Trust’s typical 4.5 kWp array of around 12 panels at around £7,600 (updated 27 August 2026) is a national benchmark, not our figure; ours follows a survey. How a Hampshire quote moves away from it is on solar panel cost in Hampshire, with the national line-by-line on solar panel installation cost. For the town detail, see solar panels Farnborough, solar panels Aldershot, solar panels Fleet and solar panels Alton. The batteries in our own job photos are EnSmart.
Sources: Switch Together: Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane, East Hampshire · Warmer Homes, Portsmouth-led consortium, status · Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Energy efficiency loans and grants · Hart District Council, Warm Homes grant · Rushmoor Borough Council, Energy efficiency in homes · East Hampshire District Council, Energy objectives · GOV.UK: grant allocations, apply page, Warm Homes Loan Scheme rules · Ofgem: ECO, Smart Export Guarantee · HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6 · ONS: Census 2021 TS054 tenure, median EPC score (March 2025) · DESNZ, Renewable electricity by local authority, 2014 to 2025 · European Commission JRC, PVGIS · Energy Saving Trust, solar costs (updated 27 August 2026). Hampshire County Council news, 19 August 2024, and Hart District Council, Solar Together in Hart, as carried on our town pages (read July 2026). Read 19 October 2026 unless dated.
Solar panel grants in Hampshire: your questions
Are "free solar panels" offers in Hampshire genuine?
Only as an income-linked scheme with criteria. The funded routes in Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire are the Warm Homes: Local Grant, through the Portsmouth-led Warmer Homes consortium, and ECO4 until 31 December 2026. On 19 October 2026 Warmer Homes said it was oversubscribed and was adding new applicants to a waiting list. An offer that skips the questions about income, benefits and your home’s EPC rating is selling something.
Is Solar Together Hampshire open?
Not in our four council areas at the moment. Solar Together now trades as Switch Together, and on 19 October 2026 its pages for Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire each said it was not active in the area, inviting residents to register to hear when the next scheme launches. No round dates are published. It is a group-buy, not a grant: you still pay for the system, at a pooled price.
How do Farnborough, Fleet, Basingstoke and Alton households apply for the Warm Homes: Local Grant in Hampshire?
Through Warmer Homes, not the district council. Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane and East Hampshire are all members of the Portsmouth-led consortium, and their own pages send residents to the Warmer Homes website to register. On 19 October 2026 Warmer Homes said the scheme was oversubscribed with a waiting list, and Basingstoke and Deane’s page said the same. Check GOV.UK’s criteria first: a privately owned home rated EPC D to G, and usually a household income of £36,000 or less.
Does Hampshire County Council give solar panel grants?
Not as far as the published sources show. GOV.UK’s Warm Homes: Local Grant list, updated 2 July 2026, has no separate Hampshire County Council entry; the four district councils for our Hampshire towns are members of the Portsmouth-led consortium instead. The county council’s role in solar has been the Solar Together group-buy, which had put more than 28,400 panels on Hampshire homes by August 2024 on its own figure. Its website blocked our automated reads on 19 October 2026, so we have not re-read its pages today.
Is there VAT on solar panels and batteries in Hampshire?
No VAT is charged on a residential solar panel or battery installation for now: HMRC VAT Notice 708/6 sets 0% until 31 March 2027, then 5% from 1 April 2027. Nobody in Rushmoor, Hart, Basingstoke and Deane or East Hampshire has to apply for it, and it is the same on a Switch Together offer as on an independent quote.
Get a straight answer for your Hampshire home
Tell us your postcode and share a recent bill, and we will say in plain terms whether panels pay their way on your roof with no grant at all, with the cost itemised in writing. If your household looks likely to meet the Warmer Homes tests, we will point you there before we quote. Call 0204 547 1892 or use the form.
Also see: solar panels across Hampshire · solar panel cost in Hampshire · planning permission in Hampshire