As thousands of UK households transition to clean technologies such as heat pumps, the UK government must ensure consumers trust that their heat pumps are affordable and reliable. Our heat pump user survey found that most heat pump owners find their system reliable and effective across all home types. Yet in some cases, the current fragmented and hard-to-navigate market has allowed for poor-quality installations to sneak in, leaving some consumers with poorly performing heating systems and high energy bills.

The UK government is now looking at reforming the consumer protection for home upgrades schemes and has an opportunity to ensure every household ends up with a heating system that delivers affordable clean heat and comfort. Here are five things the consumer protection reform should focus on.

Consumer protection should not just be about resolving issues or offering compensation after an installation has already failed. The reformed framework should make green home upgrades a safe decision, help consumers select the right tradespeople for them and support them in making the most of their new system.

The government’s ambition to establish more centralisation and oversight of consumer outcomes in the green home upgrade market through the Warm Homes Agency (WHA) is notable. But in an already crowded landscape, establishing another standalone entity risks adding regulatory noise and worsening the very fragmentation the government is trying to solve. To truly streamline the consumer journey, the government needs to spell out exactly how existing bodies such as MCS, certification bodies and TrustMark will fit into this new setup without duplicating effort.

The current self-certification system checks standards of compliance on the day of the install rather than real-world consumer outcomes, missing long-term efficiency, running costs, and mid-winter thermal comfort. Upcoming research by Nesta analysing technical audits of heat pumps in Bristol uncovered at least one fault,  varying in severity, in all of the installations inspected, despite having been signed off as compliant with the MCS standards by the installers.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s plan to require more structured and detailed installers’ self-audits before sign-offs is a good start. Asking installers to compile evidence and complete thorough self-audits (including uploading heat loss, system design and commissioning evidence) can potentially go a long way to catch common mistakes, assuming it is reviewed and used proactively. But fixing poor quality at scale requires creating clear rewards for high-quality work and consequences for poor quality.

This can be achieved through different routes.

• Richer consumer feedback on lived experience across a full-year cycle, as opposed to immediate post-install surveys which miss whether a system functions in January for example, can give consumers more accurate information, as well as motivate installers to raise their standards further.
• Collecting performance data through in-situ monitoring and publishing regular summary reports can be used to promote installers who consistently deliver excellent consumer outcomes, while proactively spotting bad installs.

At scale, this transparency can help housing associations, vulnerable households and private consumers select installers with verified track records of high performance, rather than certification compliance.

On some occasions, any heating system will inevitably perform poorly. In those cases, it should be simple and quick for consumers to get redress. The creation of an end-to-end consumer protection service under direct government oversight can be instrumental. In a less fragmented system, consumers should be able to access reliable information in one place, know where to raise issues should their installations develop faults and get efficient redress without having to navigate complex bureaucratic structures.

Making the reformed consumer protection framework mandatory for all government-supported schemes is welcome but risks leaving important consumer groups without protection.

• Able-to-pay consumers would only benefit from the reformed system as long as the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant remains (officially extended until 31 March 2030). 
• New builds are currently excluded from the proposed framework. As the Future Homes Standards come into force on 24 March 2027, new builds will likely represent a growing part of the market, and they deserve robust consumer protection as well.

The UK government should put in place clear mechanisms to monitor outcomes delivered to vulnerable consumers. In our Bristol audits, 28 social housing retrofit installations with accessible data averaged a SCOP of just 2.79 (slightly below the 2.8 MCS design minimum and well short of the ~3.0 threshold required for running-cost parity with gas at current prices). We also found that where monitoring was absent, housing staff simply could not see which systems were performing poorly, and could not hold contractors to account. Making built-in monitoring a requirement for fully-funded government schemes, where consumers typically have less agency over the retrofit process, could be a powerful tool in protecting consumers.

The UK government can build a market rooted in trust. With the right consumer protection framework in place and effective incentives for installers, home upgrades such as installing a heat pump can contribute to the UK’s electrification targets while delivering affordable clean heat and comfort to British homes.