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Cost of Living

National Infrastructure Commission recommends low income households should be given free heat pumps

18 October 2023

Independent advisers the National Infrastructure Commission has recommended in a new report that low income households are given free heat pumps to aid the transition away from gas boilers.

Polling shows that there is currently some hesitation – especially among Conservative voters – around the phasing out of gas boilers over the next decade, with a belief that net zero policies will be ‘expensive’ becoming widespread.

Policies such as this – were it to be enacted – would reflect calls for a ‘Fairness Lock’ from IPPR, protecting the least able to pay from the costs of  the green transition.

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The latest from the Cost of Living timeline:

Opinion Insight 5th February 2026

Varied levels of support for individual net zero policies

Our tracker shows the enduring popularity of policies that also save on household bills (like installing insulation, or incentives to do so).

Although Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) get a bad rep, our tracker shows support outweighing opposition and support gently rising over the past three years.

One way to look at levels of policy support across the piece is that they’re really quite stable – but some are not stable in a good way. When it comes to sales of new gas boilers, and the phase out of sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles, opposition started to outpace support around 18 months ago, and this trend has (slowly) continued. 

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