It is well known within the industry that trained installers often face delays when entering the heat pump market, with many struggling to secure their first installation job and build up a solid pipeline of heat pump installations.

To address this first installs problem, we tested providing free of charge an  air source heat pumps to newly trained installers to install at home. We piloted the Start at Home scheme with 36 experienced heating engineers in Scotland. We wanted to understand if this leads to the installer completing retrofit heat pump installations on a regular basis, and whether it increased the speed of certification, their confidence in skills and technology and boosted their credibility with customers. In June 2025, we published our findings in our report Start at Home: how to upskill heating engineers with a fully funded installation at home.

Confident with the results of our pilot, our focus has now shifted towards scaling this offer for heating engineers, engaging with various organisations and local bodies to provide their own Start at Home schemes across the UK.

We want this project to enhance both existing and new initiatives, and to build an active and skilled workforce prepared to meet the growing demand for heat pump installations.

This project also provides us with greater knowledge of how to support heating engineers as they enter the heat pump sector - an area where there is currently little insight. So far, we have identified a clear way of supporting new entrants to the sector and are working to make Start at Home available to all heating engineers in Great Britain

Now, we are focusing on how we can support and promote the different schemes we have set up. To do this, we are doing a large marketing push to reach as many heating engineers as possible. We are also supporting the schemes running Start at Home with marketing support and funding, so they can keep doing the good work they’re doing.

Heat pumps are central to the UK’s strategy for decarbonising home heating. Both the UK government and the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have identified widespread deployment as critical to achieving net zero.

However, while the number of heating professionals completing heat pump training is growing  - over 15,000 over2024 and 2025 - many still face a significant barrier: the transition from training to real-world installation. At Nesta, we believe that we can encourage the engineers who could be installing heat pumps to do it by making their first install easier to complete.

We’ve launched eight different schemes that offer Start at Home to installers across England, Wales and Scotland.  To tie it all together, we’ve built a website to help engineers compare between options available to them, and to help scheme providers with promoting their offers. We are also providing funding in the form of repayable grants to support some of our schemes with delivery.

Alongside this, we’ve also kicked off our ‘Building on Start at Home’ project, which is scoping out different models for delivering Start at Home, along with ways to expand our offering. We are looking at how the project can support installers in getting their MCS certification, as well as helping heating engineers transition to air-to-air heat pump installations. At the same time, we are working with local authorities and training providers to explore alternative routes for delivering Start at Home that can help their internal workforces retrain.

Finally, we’ve been engaging with manufacturers, MCS umbrella organisations, trade associations, local and national governments, and others about how they could offer or support Start at Home schemes moving forward.

If you’d like to talk to us about running a Start at Home scheme please contact us on [email protected].