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

This project 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. Through this project, 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 the UK.

Following positive results from our pilot, we’ve been looking at how other organisations can offer Start at Home schemes across the UK. We’ve already spoken to manufacturers, MCS umbrella organisations, trade associations, local and national governments, MCS and others about how they could offer or support such schemes.

Independently administered Start at Home schemes have already emerged from these conversations. We’ve now built a website to help engineers compare between options available to them, and to help scheme providers with promoting their offers.

Over the coming months, we will focus on:

• optimising the website and promoting these schemes to heating engineers across the UK
• engaging with organisations that can offer Start at Home schemes
• advising organisations on how Start at Home could work for them
• supporting organisations to set up Start at Home schemes.

We’ll also be evaluating the impact of these independently administered schemes so that we can build on the results of our pilot.

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