The first Warm Homes: Local Grant figures are out, and glazing is 1.9% of them

What was published, and what it covers

The Warm Homes: Local Grant has been running since April 2025 and until last week there was no published record of what it had actually installed. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero closed that gap on 27 August 2026 with the scheme's first official statistics, covering everything reported to the end of July 2026.

The scale of the machine behind it is worth stating first, because it frames everything below. Of the £15bn committed to the Warm Homes Plan, £0.5bn was allocated to this scheme to be delivered between April 2025 and March 2028, across 74 projects involving 271 local authorities, which the release puts at over 97% of eligible councils in England. It is an England-only scheme. If you are in Scotland or Wales, the routes on our double glazing grants page are the relevant ones.

The headline: 11,247 measures, 5,469 homes

Sixteen months of delivery produced 11,247 measures in 5,469 households, an average of 2.06 measures per upgraded home. That last number is the interesting one, because it tells you these are packages rather than single jobs: a household that qualifies tends to get more than one thing done at once.

It also invites a comparison the scheme's own predecessor makes unavoidable. ECO4 has installed around 949,800 measures in around 280,100 households over its lifetime. The scheme picking up where it leaves off has reached 5,469. The two are funded and run completely differently, one through an obligation on energy suppliers and the other through council-led grants, so this is not a like-for-like efficiency comparison. It is a scale comparison, and on scale the gap is the story.

Where glazing actually sits

Here is the breakdown that matters for anyone hoping to have windows funded.

DESNZ official statistics published 27 August 2026, table 2 of the accompanying data tables. Group households (313) are fewer than the sum of the rows because some homes had more than one type installed. Secondary glazing costs are suppressed because fewer than five lodgements reported them.

Against that, the measures actually doing the volume: solar PV at 4,297 installs, 38.2% of everything; the insulation group at 2,675, or 23.8%, of which loft insulation alone is 1,599; and batteries at 2,000, 17.8%. Air source heat pumps come in at 894 at an average total cost of £14,800.

So glazing is not absent from this scheme, but it is not where the money is going either. What the release does not do is explain why, and we are not going to invent a reason. Councils choose the measures on assessment, insulation and generation tend to come first on cost per unit of carbon, and the data is consistent with that without proving it.

£6,800 a job, and what that figure is not

The average total measure cost for double or triple glazing under the scheme is £6,800. Read the definition carefully before you do anything with that number: the release defines total measure cost as the full cost of the work including government funding, other funding and any spend by the household. It is the price of the job, not the size of the cheque, and no household should read it as what they would receive.

Taken as a job price, though, it is a useful outside check on our own numbers, and it passes. We put a full uPVC replacement at £4,000 to £10,000 on a mid-terrace and £5,000 to £12,000 on a semi, so a £6,800 grant-funded average sits comfortably inside the range we publish for a whole house done properly. It is also a long way above the £3,700 average for the looser energy efficient windows and doors category, which is roughly what you would expect if that line is picking up partial jobs and single doors. If you want to place your own house against it, the uPVC window cost calculator works from window count and style.

Two hundred and sixteen glazing jobs in sixteen months, across 271 councils, is roughly one per council per two years. Anyone quoting this scheme as a realistic route to free windows is selling something. It is real, it is worth checking, and it funds glazing, but the volume says plan on paying and treat a grant as the upside rather than the plan.

Double Glazing Cost Calculator Team

Which regions the money reached

DESNZ official statistics published 27 August 2026, table 3. England only; the scheme does not operate in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

The distribution follows which councils applied rather than where the cold homes are, which is what a competitive expression-of-interest process produces. The North West at 1,052 households is doing more than twice London's 412, so a homeowner comparing what windows cost in Manchester with London prices is also, on this evidence, comparing very different odds of a council scheme being open nearby.

One number in here that is easy to misread

The monthly series peaks hard at 3,516 measures in March 2026, then falls to 933, 927, 545 and 257 through to July. That looks like a scheme running out of steam, and it is worth resisting that reading. The release counts only returns submitted by grant recipients by mid-August 2026, so the newest months are the least complete and will be revised upwards as more arrive. March is also a financial year end, which pulls completions forward. The honest summary is that delivery peaked in March and that recent months are provisional and understated, not that installation stopped.

What to do with this if you were hoping for a grant

Nothing here changes the rules, and the rules are the part that decides whether you get anything. Eligibility runs on household income, benefits and your EPC band rather than on how many glazing jobs a scheme has done, and it is all set out on our Warm Homes: Local Grant eligibility guide. The grant eligibility checker runs the same tests in about a minute.

What the figures should change is your expectation. This is a scheme that has funded glazing 216 times in sixteen months across almost every council in England, and one that sits inside the wider Warm Homes Plan alongside ECO4, which itself ends on 31 December 2026. Check both, expect neither, and read the rest of our double glazing news and policy coverage for what replaces them. The next update to these figures is due on 26 November 2026.

Sources: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, "Warm Homes: Local Grant statistics - August 2026", published 27 August 2026, official statistics, provisional and subject to revision; figures for measures, households, measure types, average total measure cost and regional distribution are read from the accompanying data tables (tables 1, 2 and 3) published with that release; ECO4 comparison figures from GOV.UK as cited on our ECO4 guide; house price ranges from our own cost research, last re-verified 16 August 2026.

Price-checkedLast reviewed 28 August 2026

Reviewed byDouble Glazing Cost Calculator TeamCross-checked against Checkatrade, the FMB & GreenMatch