Two ways of counting
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes an estimate, for every local authority, of how many domestic properties have no gas meter. For Liverpool in 2024 it was 15.65%: about 37,600 of 240,360 properties. The census counts something else: how each occupied household was heated on 21 March 2021. On that measure, 20,288 households used electric heating alone, 986 used tank or bottled gas, 111 used oil and 1,107 were on a heat network.
The two will not match, and should not be expected to. A property counted by DESNZ may be empty, may have a gas meter used only for a cooker, or may be divided differently from the households the census counted. Read together, they say the same thing: most of Liverpool's non-gas homes are electrically heated, and oil and LPG, common in the countryside, are rare here.
Electric heating: the biggest group
Electric heating covers storage heaters charged overnight, panel or convector heaters, and electric boilers feeding radiators. The census does not cross the heating question with the type of home, so it cannot say how many of the 20,288 electric-heated households were in flats; what it does show is that 23.2% of Liverpool households lived in a flat of some kind, which is why the flats rules on the terraces and flats page matter for this group.
A heat pump changes the arithmetic for these homes. Direct electric heating turns each unit of electricity into one unit of heat. A heat pump moves heat from the outside air and typically delivers several units of heat for each unit of electricity, so the same warmth needs less electricity. How much less depends on the system design, the home's heat loss and how it is run, which is why the design and the heat-loss calculation matter more than any headline figure.
Options for an electric-heated home
- Air-to-water heat pump. Feeds radiators or underfloor heating and usually a hot water cylinder. Needs pipework if the home has no wet system, which is a bigger job in a flat.
- Air-to-air heat pump. Heats rooms directly through indoor units, with no radiators or cylinder. It does not provide hot water, so an immersion or other water heater stays.
- High retention storage heaters. Not a heat pump, but on the council's list of Warm Homes: Local Grant measures, and sometimes the practical choice in a small flat.
Grants for homes without gas
The national Boiler Upgrade Scheme accepts electric heating, as well as fossil fuel, as the system being replaced, for property owners in England and Wales; GOV.UK sets out the conditions. Liverpool City Council's Warm Homes: Local Grant is aimed at lower-income households in homes rated EPC D to G, and its list of measures includes high retention storage heaters as well as hybrid and ground source heat pumps. The Warm Homes: Local Grant page has the pathways.
LPG, oil and heat networks
The few Liverpool households on bottled gas or oil are in the same position as rural homes elsewhere: a heat pump replaces a fuel delivered by tanker or cylinder, and the main questions are the outdoor unit's position and the radiators. Households on a district or communal heat network are different again. Their heat comes from a shared system, so a change of heat source is a decision for whoever runs the network, not for one flat.