Is the £7,500 income assessed?

No. Any homeowner or small landlord leaving a fossil fuel or electric system behind can qualify regardless of earnings, subject to the property conditions.

Do I have to fill anything in?

No. The claim is submitted after commissioning, you confirm by email when Ofgem asks, and the money had already been taken off your price before that.

What exactly is the EPC condition?

A valid certificate with no outstanding loft or cavity recommendations. Where a top-up is needed it is inexpensive and quick, and the survey catches it early enough to plan around.

Are hybrids or heat pump swaps included?

Neither. Only complete replacements of fossil fuel or electric heating systems attract the payment.

Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant applications in Gateshead

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme contributes £7,500 towards an air source heat pump installed in Gateshead. Income is irrelevant to eligibility, the MCS certified contractor lodges the application, and the payment is removed from the invoice, so the figure quoted is already the after-grant figure.

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Boiler Upgrade Scheme paperwork for a Gateshead heat pump installation

The scheme, briefly

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is the Government's principal domestic heat pump incentive in England: a flat £7,500 towards an air source installation, claimed by the contractor for the homeowner and subtracted from the bill rather than reimbursed later. On a £10,000 Gateshead job the household pays £2,500. Nothing is repayable, no loan is involved, no income assessment takes place, and the funding is confirmed into the late 2020s.

Who qualifies around the borough

Owner-occupiers and smaller landlords leaving gas, oil, LPG or electric heating behind. Storage heaters qualify as the outgoing system, which matters enormously across Wrekenton, Deckham and Felling. New builds are outside the scheme.
A current EPC with insulation recommendations dealt with. In practice this is rarely painful locally: Low Fell's cavity semis usually need nothing more than a loft top-up, and the solid-wall terraces around Bensham have no cavity to fill, so the loft alone tends to clear it.
MCS certification for both contractor and equipment. No certificate, no grant, which is why it gets confirmed before anything else on every quote issued here.
A system capable of heating the entire property, which is the second reason the measured survey precedes any price.

How the claim actually proceeds

Nothing lands on your desk. Following commissioning the contractor submits the claim to Ofgem with the MCS certificate attached, Ofgem emails you to check the work took place, you confirm, and the £7,500 is paid to the contractor, which is exactly why your quoted figure was already net of it. The cycle normally closes within a few weeks of the system going live. A full walkthrough sits in the BUS grant guide.

What the scheme will not do

Hybrids are excluded, so any hybrid quote here arrives paired with a grant-funded full conversion for comparison. Replacing one heat pump with another is excluded too, as is any property that has already drawn a payment. The EPC condition occasionally means fabric work happens first, which is far better identified at survey stage than discovered with the floor up. Electrically heated homes across Springwell, Beacon Lough, Felling and the Chowdene estates are squarely eligible, and lower-income households may qualify for separate ECO4 insulation funding alongside, flagged during the survey where it applies.