Heat pumps in Leeds: where heat networks fit and where they do not

In February 2025 the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published a heat network zone opportunity report for Leeds, produced with Leeds City Council. It identified 26 potential heat network zones across the city. The largest, the Leeds City Centre zone, takes in Leeds PIPES and the planned South Bank and Aire Valley networks. Smaller zones were identified in places such as Morley, Farsley and Whinmoor, which the report suggests could be served by large-scale heat pumps.

Leeds PIPES takes heat from the city's recycling and energy recovery facility and supplies more than 3,000 council homes and businesses around the city centre. The report stresses that its maps and figures come from a pilot and are likely to change, so treat them as a direction of travel, not a plan for your street.

Source: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk · gov.uk

Heat network zoning lets a zone co-ordinator require certain buildings to connect within a set time. The government's consultation named three groups: new buildings, big non-domestic buildings and blocks that already share a communal boiler. A Leeds semi or terrace with its own boiler is in none of them.

In practice, if you own a terraced, semi-detached or detached house in Leeds with its own boiler, zoning does not stop you fitting an air source heat pump, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme applies as anywhere else in England. If you live in a council or housing association block on a communal system, or you are buying a new-build flat in the city centre, ask the landlord or developer about heat network plans before assuming an individual heat pump is possible.

• own house with a gas boiler: heat pump decision is yours
• flat in a communally heated block: ask the freeholder or landlord first
• new build in the city centre: ask the developer how the building will be heated
• business premises: check with the council if the building is large

Source: gov.uk

Leeds has many older terraced houses, including back-to-back terraces with no rear garden or rear wall. For an air source heat pump that raises practical questions: where the outdoor unit can go when there is no back yard, how close it will be to neighbours' windows, and whether a front elevation position is acceptable. In England an outdoor unit on a house is usually permitted development if it meets the size limit and the MCS 020a planning standard, but a unit on a wall facing the road in a conservation area is not.

Solid brick walls lose more heat than cavity walls, so an older terrace often needs larger radiators or some insulation work before a heat pump runs efficiently. A room-by-room heat loss calculation will show where.

Source: planningportal.co.uk

Leeds homeowners claim the Boiler Upgrade Scheme through their MCS installer; households on low incomes can also ask Leeds City Council about the Warm Homes: Local Grant. Describe your house and its boiler in the form. Installers covering West Yorkshire see it without your name, a single installer buys it, and we email you who that is before your details go across. Nothing is charged to you.