Where the verdict comes from, who sees your details, and how installers earn their place.

We start from the same record the government uses to check eligibility for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme: your home's Energy Performance Certificate, or EPC. It's a public register of about 28 million properties in England and Wales, run by the UK government and free for anyone to search.

When you enter your postcode, we pull what's on record for your address: wall construction, insulation status, glazing, current heating system, floor area, energy rating. That's most of the suitability picture without asking you a single question.

The EPC can't tell us five things, so we ask:

• Whether you own the property
• Whether there's outdoor space for a unit
• What you currently heat with
• Whether you have a hot water cylinder
• Whether the property is listed or in a conservation area

Before we calculate anything we show you every fact we've inferred and let you correct it. EPCs can be ten years old. You may have replaced the boiler, added insulation, or upgraded the radiators since the last assessment. The verdict is only as good as the data behind it, so we let you fix the data.

About one home in five doesn't have an EPC on record. Usually that's a newer build, or a property that hasn't been sold or rented in a while. If yours is one of them, we ask the same questions in a longer form.

Every check ends in one of three answers. We use plain words because the answer matters more than the marketing.

• Full Pass. Your home is suitable now. If you'd like to go ahead, we introduce you to one local installer.
• Conditional Pass. Your home is close. There's specific work to do first, often insulation or a cylinder swap, and we tell you what.
• Not Yet. Your home isn't suitable in its current state, and a heat pump now would be a poor decision. You get an Improvement Plan that lays out the order of work.

We chose 'Not Yet' rather than 'Fail' on purpose. A bad fit today is often a good fit in two or three years, once insulation, glazing, or radiator work is done. The Improvement Plan exists for that reason. Nobody is sent to an installer for a home that isn't ready.

The verdict is a structured rule. The same inputs always produce the same answer. We're not optimising for conversion.

This is the part most people want to understand before they enter a postcode. There are three branches, and they behave very differently.

Any installer working with the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has to be MCS-certified. That's the legal floor. We treat it as the starting point, not the answer.

Before an installer can receive a single homeowner introduction we check:

• MCS certification is active, not lapsed, and covers air-source heat pumps specifically. Verifiable on the public mcscertified.com register.
• Installation volume is at least ten heat pumps a year. The MCS Data Dashboard publishes installer-by-installer counts going back to 2008.
• Companies House shows an active company, two years of trading minimum, no overdue filings.
• Reviews average 4.0 or above with at least ten on Google or Trustpilot.
• Heat Geek and RECC/HIES memberships count for more. Neither is required, but installers who hold them are routed to first.

We re-check MCS status every quarter. Certification can lapse and we'd rather know before a homeowner does.

Every fact above is publicly verifiable. If you want to check your matched installer yourself, the registers are at mcscertified.com, the MCS Data Dashboard, and Companies House.

You don't pay us anything. The installer pays a fee when we introduce you and they confirm they'll be in touch. That's the entire business model.

We don't take a cut of the install. We don't earn an affiliate fee on insulation or solar work mentioned in the Improvement Plan. We don't sell newsletter subscribers to advertisers.

The fee is paid per match, not per converted sale. That gives us one incentive: only introduce homeowners whose homes are ready. A bad match wastes the installer's money and breaks the relationship the model depends on, so we don't send them.

In plain English, this is what we do with your information.

• Postcode and EPC data. We pull the EPC record live each time you run a check. We store the verdict and your inputs against a private token so you can come back to your results.
• Email and phone. Stored if you create a check or sign up for the newsletter. Used to deliver your verdict, the Improvement Plan, the newsletter you opted into, or to introduce you to your matched installer if you ask us to.
• No automated decisions. We do not run automated decisions with legal or significant effects on you. The verdict is informational. Whether to proceed is your call and your installer's.
• Your rights. You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at any time. Email hello@heatpass.co.uk and we'll respond within seven working days.

The full legal version, with the lawful-basis grid and retention schedule, lives at /privacy. This page is the readable summary.