Grants and funding for solar panels for nursing homes

There is no single "nursing home solar grant" you can apply to, and any installer who implies otherwise should be treated with caution. What exists instead is a stack of tax reliefs, an ongoing export payment and a zero-capex finance route that, together, materially lower the cost of solar for a private nursing home. This page sets out every route that genuinely applies, corrects two that do not, and names the public-sector schemes a private home cannot use. All figures are current for 2026; confirm your own tax position with your accountant.

Capital allowances: the biggest lever

For a tax-paying nursing operator, capital allowances do most of the work. The Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) gives 100% first-year relief on qualifying spend up to £1m a year, a cap made permanent from 1 April 2023. Most single-home installs are relieved in full. The benefit is the allowance multiplied by your tax rate, so a £50,000 system relieved in full is worth about £12,500 at 25% Corporation Tax. AIA is available to companies, sole traders and most partnerships, and charity-owned homes access it through a trading subsidiary.

Be precise about the second route, because it is the one most often mis-sold. HMRC classes solar panels as special-rate plant (Capital Allowances Manual CA22335), which means solar does not qualify for 100% "full expensing". Companies instead get a 50% First-Year Allowance on panel spend above the £1m AIA cap, with the remaining balance written down at 6% a year in the special-rate pool. The widely-publicised new 40% first-year allowance from 1 January 2026 is main-rate only and does not apply to solar. In practice most homes relieve their whole system through AIA; the 50% FYA matters mainly for group spend that exceeds £1m in a single year.

VAT: 20%, and reclaimable — not the 0% you see advertised for homes

This is the first common correction. Domestic solar has enjoyed a temporary 0% VAT rate, and it is often advertised as though it applies everywhere. It does not. Commercial care premises are standard-rated at 20% VAT; the zero rate under VAT Notice 708/6 is restricted to residential accommodation and buildings used solely for a charitable purpose. The good news is that a VAT-registered nursing operator making taxable supplies normally reclaims that 20% as input tax, so the effective net cost is the ex-VAT price. It is a cash-flow timing benefit rather than free money: you pay the VAT up front and recover it on a later return. Operators that make some exempt supplies may be partly exempt and able to recover only part, so check your partial-exemption position.

Business rates: 100% exempt to 31 March 2035

Eligible onsite rooftop solar and battery storage for self-consumption is 100% exempt from business rates in England (with an equivalent measure in Wales) from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2035. The Valuation Office Agency applies it automatically by excluding the qualifying green plant from your rateable value, so there is no application to make. If you believe your rooftop solar has been wrongly included in your rateable value, contact the VOA. Scotland runs its own separate scheme.

Smart Export Guarantee (SEG): payment for what you export

The Smart Export Guarantee pays you per kilowatt-hour for surplus solar exported to the grid, on systems up to 5 MW. There is no fixed government rate; each licensed supplier sets its own, which must be above zero. In 2026, standard commercial export tariffs sit around 3-8p/kWh, with the best commercial rates reaching roughly 14-16p/kWh. Because a nursing home self-consumes 50-65% of its generation, export is the smaller share, so SEG is a top-up (typically a few hundred to over a thousand pounds a year on a 40-80 kWp system) rather than the main saving. For a business, SEG income is taxable trading income, so declare it.

Power Purchase Agreement (PPA): solar with no capital

If capital must stay in clinical care, a PPA installs the system at zero capex. A funder owns and maintains the array, and you buy the electricity it generates at a rate below your grid tariff, typically over 15-25 years with a buyout option from around year seven. It can be cash-positive from day one. The trade-off is that you do not own the asset, so there is no capital-allowance benefit; we weigh a PPA against a capex-plus-AIA purchase before you decide. You can read more about the mechanics on our sibling site for solar power purchase agreements.

Workplace Charging Scheme: for staff and visiting-nurse EVs

Many nursing homes now charge staff and visiting district nurses' electric vehicles on site. The government's Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) is a voucher-based grant that covers part of the purchase and installation cost of EV chargepoint sockets for eligible businesses and charities, capped per socket and by number of sockets. Paired with solar, daytime charging lines up neatly with peak generation, so the electricity is largely self-generated at around 3-8p/kWh against 25-30p on public networks. It is a chargepoint grant, not a solar grant, but it complements a rooftop system well; our sibling site covers solar and commercial EV charging in depth.

Two things that do NOT apply to a nursing home

Honesty here is a credibility marker, so we state it plainly:

• The 0% domestic VAT rate does not apply. As above, commercial care premises pay 20% (reclaimable). Any quote applying 0% VAT to a commercial nursing home is wrong.
• The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF / Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund) does not apply. That funding is for registered social-housing landlords' communal and domestic stock, not a privately-run nursing home's roof. It is sometimes mentioned in "care" funding lists because it can touch sheltered and extra-care housing; it is not a route for a nursing home.

Public-sector schemes a private home cannot use

These appear on many "commercial solar grant" lists but are not open to a private nursing operator's own roof:

• Great British Energy (GB Energy) solar funds public and community buildings, state-funded schools, the NHS and community groups. A private nursing home cannot apply for its own premises.
• Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) is public-sector only, administered by Salix, and funds heat decarbonisation more than solar.
• ECO4 and the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) are domestic household schemes; GBIS closed on 31 March 2026. Neither has any business route.

NHS-run or charitable-community facilities are a different case, and a charity-owned hospice with nursing registration may have donor and gift-aid capital routes a private company does not. If any solar company tells a private nursing home it can get a GB Energy, PSDS, ECO4 or SHDF grant for its roof, that is a red flag.

How the routes stack, and how we help

For a typical private nursing home the stack is: relieve the capital cost through AIA (100% up to £1m), reclaim the 20% VAT if VAT-registered, take the automatic business-rates exemption, and earn SEG on the modest export. If capital is the constraint, a PPA replaces the capex route entirely. Group operators layer in the shared £1m AIA cap planned across tax years, the 50% FYA for spend above it, and SECR Scope 2 reporting on the generation. We prepare the capital-allowance and funding comparison alongside your quote, from your own meter data, so the numbers reflect your home rather than a template. The reference cards below summarise each route with links to the official guidance.