Last week the Warm Homes Plan was published with £15 billion on the table and a promise to upgrade millions of homes. The question is whether it actually moves the dial in the real world where boilers break, panic sets in and decisions get made fast.
I sat down with Emily Seymour from Which? to talk about how households really behave when it comes to heating. She told me straight that most people do not plan upgrades years in advance. “People don’t replace their boiler because they want to,” she said. “They replace it because it’s broken, they’ve got no heating or hot water and they need a decision quickly.”
That moment matters because it shapes everything that follows. Emily told me, “When people are under pressure they default to what they know,” which usually means another gas boiler even if grants and alternatives exist. By the time support is mentioned, she said, “they’re already in a distress purchase situation.”
We talked about cost and why it still looms so large. Emily said, “Affordability is still the biggest perceived barrier,” even when help is available. She told me many households simply do not realise what support exists until it is too late to use it properly. “People hear about grants after the boiler has already failed,” she said, “and by then they don’t feel they have time to explore.”
The Which? research cuts through the noise. Emily explained that the strongest response comes when people are shown both sides of the decision. “If you combine clear information about financial support with the risk of disruption from waiting too long, up to eighty five percent of homeowners engage,” she told me. Cost alone is not enough. Fear alone is not enough. Together they land.
One of her most telling lines was about timing. “Planning ahead feels unnecessary until the boiler breaks,” she said. “But once it breaks, it’s too late to plan properly.” That is the gap the Warm Homes Plan has to close if it wants to succeed.
She was also clear that this is not about consumer hostility. “Most people are open to low carbon heating,” she told me. “They just want it to be affordable, manageable and trustworthy.”
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