Off the gas grid
Funding
Areas and data
Planning
The local picture behind the guides
The three areas had 420,548 households in 2021. 19,096 of them relied on oil or LPG alone, a much larger share than in most of England, and the government's grant scheme had paid for 1867 heat pumps across them by September 2026. Those two numbers explain the guide's focus on off-gas and rural homes.
The guide stays inside its boundary. Halton, Wirral and Liverpool, and the Greater Manchester boroughs to the east, have their own councils and schemes and are not covered here.
Suggested reading order
- Heating with oil or LPG: the route finder, then oil and LPG homes, then ground source if there is land.
- On a lower income: the Warm Homes: Local Grant page first, then the route finder.
- A listed or older house: planning rules, then listed buildings, then air source for rural homes.
- Curious about your area: the area page, then Cheshire in numbers.
What each page carries
Every guide opens with a short answer, lists the Cheshire figures it uses in the dark panel beside the text with a link to each source, and closes with questions people ask and the full source list. If a figure on one page looks different from another, the numbers page shows which dataset each comes from: households in 2021, meters in 2024 or grants to September 2026.
Farm and estate owners, landlords with rural lets, and park home residents each have a specific page or section; use the site map if the menus do not show the one you want.