| Figure | Cheshire East | Cheshire West | Warrington | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Households (2021) | 174,856 | 155,156 | 90,536 | ONS TS046 |
| No gas meter (2024) | 11.55% | 10.76% | 5.32% | DESNZ |
| Mains gas only | 76.9% | 78.0% | 83.9% | ONS TS046 |
| Oil only | 7,441 (4.3%) | 5,505 (3.5%) | 417 (0.5%) | ONS TS046 |
| Tank or bottled gas only | 3,006 (1.7%) | 2,256 (1.5%) | 471 (0.5%) | ONS TS046 |
| Electric only | 9,714 (5.6%) | 8,763 (5.6%) | 4,768 (5.3%) | ONS TS046 |
| Renewable heating | 0.89% | 0.80% | 0.48% | ONS TS046 |
| Detached houses | 36.6% | 30.6% | 24.6% | ONS TS044 |
| Caravans or mobile homes | 780 | 1,069 | 82 | ONS TS044 |
| Owner-occupied | 71.9% | 68.3% | 68.7% | ONS TS054 |
| Social rented | 11.6% | 14.6% | 15.3% | ONS TS054 |
| Grant-funded heat pumps (May 2022 to Sep 2026) | 892 | 751 | 224 | DESNZ BUS |
| Listed-building records | 2,681 | 2,542 | 392 | planning.data.gov.uk |
What stands out
- Oil. 4.3% of Cheshire East and 3.5% of Cheshire West and Chester households used oil alone, against 3.5% nationally; Warrington 0.5%.
- Detached homes. 36.6% in Cheshire East against 23.2% nationally.
- Ownership. Above the national 61.6% in all three areas.
- Grants. Cheshire East's 892 is the highest of any North West council area.
Using the figures carefully
The census, the off-gas estimates and the grant statistics count different things at different times: households in March 2021, properties with meters in 2024, and heat pumps paid for over four years. Compare like with like, and treat combinations of them, such as grants per household, as a rough sense of scale rather than a rate.
Listed-building counts are entries in the national dataset that sit within or cross each council's boundary. An entry can be one house or a group of buildings, and a few on a boundary may appear in two areas.
Reading each row
- Households are occupied homes counted on census day; empty properties are not included.
- No gas meter is DESNZ's estimate of domestic properties without one, a different measure from the census rows.
- Heating rows count households using that fuel alone. Households with two or more systems are not in the fuel rows.
- Renewable heating includes heat pumps and other renewable systems, alone or alongside another type.
- Detached houses and caravans come from the accommodation type table.
- Tenure is who owns or rents; the Boiler Upgrade Scheme needs an owner and excludes social housing.
- Grant-funded heat pumps are vouchers redeemed under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, by the area of the property.
- Listed-building records are list entries, not homes.
Each figure on the other pages of this guide comes from one of these rows, so this page is the place to check a number quoted elsewhere.
Three areas, three profiles
Put side by side, the rows sketch three different places. Cheshire East is the most rural of the three on these measures: the highest off-gas share, the most oil-heated households, the most detached houses and the most listed-building records, and the most grant-funded heat pumps. Cheshire West and Chester is close behind on oil and off-gas homes, has the most park homes and a larger share of social renting. Warrington is a largely gas-heated, suburban borough, where heat pumps will mostly replace gas boilers in semi-detached and detached houses.
Those differences are why the guide has a page for each area as well as the shared pages on oil and LPG, ground source and grants. The rules are the same everywhere; the homes they apply to are not.
Per household, side by side
Dividing by households makes the three areas easier to compare. Per 1,000 households, Cheshire East has had about 5.1 grant-funded heat pumps and holds about 15.3 listed-building records; Cheshire West and Chester 4.8 and 16.4; Warrington 2.5 and 4.3. Oil and LPG together are the only heating for 6.0% of households in Cheshire East, 5.0% in Cheshire West and Chester and 1.0% in Warrington.
Each of these rates is worked out from the same households counted in March 2021, so the three areas can be compared directly.