Viessmann & Nesta Start at Home Initiative
Start your journey
Want to get into heat pump installations but don’t know where to start? Viessmann has teamed up with not for profit Nesta to create a clear and supported pathway for heating engineers to begin transitioning to heat pump installers.
Nesta effectively pays for you, in conjuction with MCS, to train, qualify then to install your first heat pump in your own home.
In addition the in house Viessmann team will provide:
- Vitocal Air source heat pump & BPEC qualification training
- Schematics & heat loss calculation for your home
- Commissioning of the installation
- MCS certification & building regs
Once you have installed your first heat pump you will feel the benefits and have the confidence to install heat pumps for your customers.
Start to finish support from ViAccess MCS umbrella
Viessmann is the UK's only major manufacturer that provides MCS umbrella service and grant funded BPEC plumbing and heating qualifications.
This means that Viessmann is uniquely placed to provide "Start at home" that includes a heat pump. So if you want total manufacturer support for your first installation choose Viessmann.
Why "Start at Home" in needed
Net-Zero Mandate and the Role of Heat Pumps
The United Kingdom has a legally binding commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, as legislated by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019. A core component of this strategy is the decarbonisation of residential heating, which currently relies heavily on fossil fuels.1 To meet this objective, the government has set a highly ambitious target of installing 600,000 heat pumps annually by 2028. This target is considered a "herculean endeavour" by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), yet its achievement is critical for unlocking emissions cuts in other sectors and meeting the broader 2030 emissions reduction goals.2
The Installer Shortage: A Critical Bottleneck
A Nesta report published in June 2025 highlights a significant gap between these targets and the current state of the industry. Nesta's analysis estimates that there are only around 3,000 trained heat pump engineers in the UK. To meet the government's installation targets, the industry will need to add 5,000 to 7,000 new engineers every year from 2025 until 2035, a scale-up larger than the industry's total size at the time of the report.
Nesta's research identifies two primary barriers that prevent existing gas boiler engineers from making the transition to heat pumps.
- The first is a financial disincentive, as training to install heat pumps can cost thousands of pounds, and wages for these jobs can be broadly lower than those for gas boiler installations. This creates a risk that engineers may spend more on training than they will make from it.
- The second, more subtle barrier, is the transition from classroom training to a real-world, high-stakes installation on a customer's property. This "first install" barrier presents a significant professional risk, leading many trained professionals to delay or abandon their entry into the market.
The "Start at Home" model is a direct, data-driven response to this specific market failure. Nesta's research had previously suggested that a £5,000 payment to 5,000 heating engineers per year would be a more cost-effective intervention than subsidising homeowners to buy heat pumps. The "Start at Home" initiative effectively delivers a solution that aligns with this research. It addresses both the financial barrier by providing free equipment and the confidence barrier by allowing the installation to take place in a low-risk environment—the installer's own home.
This is not merely a promotional campaign; "Start at Home" is a strategically sound intervention designed to solve a public-interest problem, which builds brand credibility and positions Viessmann and other partners as industry leaders.
