Boiler manufacturer Worcester Bosch has responded to last week's Budget.

Commenting on the Budget, Martyn Bridges, director of technical communication and product management at Worcester Bosch commented; “There are encouraging signs for the decarbonisation of the heating industry within this year’s Budget, in particular the £100m grant for homes to adopt low-carbon heating. 

"However, if the £100m fund is to be an outright “donation” to persuade someone to change their heating system to a heatpump for example, then what would that entail? If we take an oil boiler installation and compare with a heatpump installation then the difference in cost is probably around £3k to £4k depending of course on site conditions. If the radiators and pipework need replacing as well, which is likely then this goes up even more.

"So £100m divided by the cost difference between the two technologies of say £4k then we could treat 25,000 homes. There are around 1.6m homes in the UK on oil so it won’t make a great difference to the carbon emissions of the UK. It would however “prime” the market, start to get installers and suppliers into the habit of installing heatpumps.

"I would have thought the money would be wiser spent on Hybrid installations rather than the outright substitution of an oil boiler. There does need to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the house and system is suitable for a heatpump and whether there is sufficient electricity supply to the house  to power one.

"So there are promising signs but the devil is in the detail and more guidance from industry will be necessary.”