Which homes are off the gas grid, so I can sell the £9,000 heat-pump uplift before it ends?

What is the off-gas-grid heat-pump uplift, who claims it, and until when?

From 21 July 2026 the Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays an uplifted grant of £9,000 towards an air-to-water or ground-source heat pump that replaces oil or LPG heating in an eligible off-gas-grid property in England or Wales, and Ofgem’s scheme page states the uplift is available until 31 March 2027 (Ofgem, Boiler Upgrade Scheme, read 13 September 2026). The scheme is installer-led: an MCS-certified installer applies for and redeems the voucher on the property owner’s behalf, so the list you build is a list of homes to quote, not a list of applicants. Air-to-air heat pumps are not in the uplift — Ofgem’s installers page says “an air-to-water or a ground source heat pump only”. One thing no page we read settles is whether 31 March 2027 binds on the application date or the installation date; check the current Ofgem installer guidance before quoting a completion in early 2027.

What does “off the gas grid” mean to the scheme, and what does it mean in the data?

To Ofgem, a property qualifies for the £9,000 uplifted grant value only if it is not “fuelled by mains gas (capped or clamped supply meter points are still considered as being fuelled by mains gas)”, does not “have a record of an existing gas meter point”, is not on a heat network and is not a new build (Ofgem, Boiler Upgrade Scheme — installers, read 13 September 2026). GOV.UK’s plain-language version for the homeowner is that “you do not have a mains gas connection at the property” (GOV.UK, what you can get). None of the three public datasets below tests those four things for an individual address. The EPC records what fuel the assessor saw; the Xoserve register records whether a postcode has any gas record at all; the non-gas map estimates a share of homes per area. Each is a proxy that shortens the drive — a dormant gas meter point still makes a home on-grid in the scheme’s eyes even when its EPC says oil, and only the installer’s own check at survey settles that.

Can the EPC tell me which homes heat with oil or LPG?

Every domestic Energy Performance Certificate lodged in England and Wales carries a main fuel field, which the government’s data dictionary defines as “the fuel used to power the property’s main heating system — for example, mains gas, electricity, heating oil, or solid fuels (such as wood)” (MHCLG, domestic EPC data dictionary, read 13 September 2026). Because it is recorded per property, a home whose latest certificate says oil or LPG is a per-address candidate — the only one of the three sources that names a door rather than a postcode or an area. The limits are in the same dataset: the value is what the assessor recorded on the certificate’s inspection date, so a home that changed fuel since is wrong, and the open data covers “certificates registered since 2012” only, so a home with no certificate in that window is invisible. Older, pre-2013 certificates that have been loaded from historic files store fuel as free text rather than a coded label, so a fuel filter matches unevenly on those rows. Scotland’s register is separate and is not in this data.

What is the Xoserve Off Gas Postcode Register, and what does it actually say?

Xoserve publishes an Off Gas Postcode Register — “a list of postcodes where Xoserve holds no record of an active gas connection by either large or small gas transporters” (Xoserve, Supply Point Administration, read 13 September 2026). The current edition is March 2026, last updated 23 March 2026, with the next update due in September 2026. It is a whole-postcode, no-gas-record list, not a per-property fuel record. It matters because the government itself falls back on it: the Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics for July 2026 state that “the list of off-gas postcodes published by Xoserve is used to determine grid connectivity of installation where this is not provided as part of the application process. Postcodes not on the Xoserve list are assumed to be on-grid” (DESNZ, Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics: July 2026, published 27 August 2026). The limit is the grain: a postcode on the list can still contain a home with a capped meter or one heated electrically, and a postcode off the list can contain individual oil homes on a street that has gas mains. The page prints no licence terms, so this guide links to the register and does not republish it.

What is the non-gas map, and how far can I trust it?

The non-gas map at nongasmap.org.uk was “created by Kiln for Affordable Warmth Solutions, in conjunction with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy” (now DESNZ) and shows the estimated share of homes off the gas grid by local authority and by Lower Super Output Area, with “the postcode view … available to registered users only” (Non-Gas Map, read 13 September 2026). Its figures are modelled, not counted: the site says the department “estimated the percentage of non-gas properties at LSOA level using AddressBase and the location details of properties on the gas grid during 2013”, with property counts to April 2015 and tenure from the 2011 census. That makes it a good tool for choosing which districts to search first and a poor one for choosing which door to knock. No newer update date was found on the page when we read it, so treat the shares as a decade-old picture of where off-grid homes cluster, not a current count.

When the three disagree, which do I trust for a doorstep and which for a letter?

Use each source at the grain it was built for: the non-gas map to choose areas, the Xoserve register to include or exclude whole postcodes, and the EPC main-fuel value to choose individual addresses to write to. Only the EPC is per property, and only the Xoserve list is what DESNZ falls back on when an application is silent about grid connection, so an oil-or-LPG EPC inside a Xoserve off-gas postcode is the tightest list you can build from public data, and every home in a Xoserve postcode is the widest — it will include electric-only homes and homes with a capped gas meter. For a letter, the tight list is the right one. For a doorstep or a quote, none of the three replaces the installer’s own check for a record of a gas meter point, which is the test Ofgem’s installers page sets out. This is a method, not a rule from any scheme document.

The same three sources, side by side. Every cell restates a fact from a passage above; the sources for each are in the passages and in What this guide depends on.

How do I do this in EcoBrace?

Run a postcode-district search and filter by main fuel: enter a district such as ZZ9 (a fictional one — pick your own), run the search, and EcoBrace fetches the EPC data live from the official register for every certificate in that district. In the results grid, use the main fuel column filter to keep only oil and LPG, then export the narrowed list to Excel (a paid-account feature) or add it straight to a Direct Mail campaign — the campaign’s recipients come from the search, so no file leaves the platform. The limits are the EPC’s own: main fuel is a filter on the results after the search runs, not a pre-search option; certificates lag reality; and on loaded pre-2013 rows the fuel value matches unevenly. A full-postcode search with no extra data is free; a district search is charged on the actual number of postcodes searched, with an estimate shown first as a maximum. Scotland is outside both the uplift, which is England and Wales only, and pay-as-you-go district search, which is not available there.

What does this guide not cover?

It does not tell a homeowner whether they qualify for a grant — the scheme’s rules are on GOV.UK and eligibility is confirmed by the installer at survey; this guide only helps you decide who to write to.