Switch Together Review 2026
Switch Together (ex-Solar Together) Review: Real Prices, Aftercare and Which Councils Run Rounds
I’ve watched group-buying schemes come and go in UK domestic solar for the best part of twenty years. This one is real, it’s been running since 2015, and the auction genuinely does cut prices. But it doesn’t cut them evenly, and the independent audit nobody seems to have read says exactly where the saving disappears.
The short version
Switch Together is Solar Together renamed — iChoosr’s council-backed group buy. It’s real, and the auction does cut prices. But the discount depends almost entirely on system size: the independent audit of the London scheme found big arrays saved up to 43%, while the smallest band once cost 29.6% more than the local average. Register if a round’s open. Then price your offer per kW against a local quote before the deposit leaves your account.
Same scheme, new badge
What the rebrand actually changed
If you’ve been waiting for Solar Together to come back round in your area, it already has. It’s just called Switch Together now. Same company behind it — iChoosr Ltd, a Dutch group-buying outfit founded in 2008 that’s been in the UK energy market since 2012. Switch Together is simply its trading name.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Solihull, Wiltshire, Walsall, Monmouthshire, the Vale of Glamorgan and Windsor and Maidenhead all describe their current scheme as “previously known as Solar Together” on their own council pages. Walsall’s FAQ puts it flatly: if you’ve heard of Solar Together, it has now rebranded as Switch Together.
What did change is the shopping list. The old scheme was panels and batteries. The new one adds heat pumps, EV chargers and energy tariffs under one name. For solar buyers, the mechanics are identical to the scheme iChoosr first ran in Norfolk back in 2015. It has launched 137 solar group-buying schemes since 2012, so this is a well-worn machine, not an experiment.
Your council doesn’t run this, doesn’t pick your installer and doesn’t check the work. Walsall states its role is “solely to promote this opportunity to Walsall residents”. Worcestershire goes further: the council “does not select the contractor or monitor their installations”, and recommends you get more than one quote before deciding. Solihull says the same: do your own research on pricing and contact local installers for quotations.
That’s not a criticism of the councils. It’s just the structure, and it matters enormously when something goes wrong later.
The mechanics
How the reverse auction actually runs
It’s a reverse auction, which is the opposite of the eBay version. Pre-vetted installers bid downwards against each other for the whole group’s work, and the winner’s price becomes everyone’s price for their size band.
You register, free, while your council’s round is open
You give rough details of your roof — size, orientation, that sort of thing. No obligation, no cost, no survey.
Installers bid in the auction
Bidding happens after registrations close. The more people registered, the better the volume on offer, and in theory the keener the bids.
You get a personal recommendation by email
System size, equipment, price, estimated output. Councils typically give you four to six weeks to decide.
You accept and pay £150
Refunded if the survey later finds your roof unsuitable. This is the point where iChoosr hands you over — Solihull’s wording is that after you pay the deposit, the winning installer takes over responsibility for your installation.
Only now does anyone look at your roof
The technical survey comes after the price is set and the deposit is paid. That ordering is the single most important thing to understand about this scheme.
Installation
Usually one to two days on site, but often months after you signed up. A summer registration commonly means an autumn-to-spring install.
You don’t write iChoosr a cheque, but you are paying it. In the London scheme, iChoosr collected an undisclosed fee per installation from the installer, plus a £70 royalty per customer — of which £20 went to the borough and £50 was held for the Greater London Authority. That cost sits inside the price the installer bid. It’s a perfectly normal commercial model, but “free to register” isn’t the same as “free”.
Read the headline carefully
The benchmark problem: why “41% off” can still be an ordinary price
Councils publish some eye-catching discount figures. The West of England reported 22% in 2021, 34% in 2023 and 41% in 2025. Swindon reported 39% on its 2024 round. Worcestershire’s 2024 scheme was reported at around 10%.
Here’s the catch, and it’s a big one. Those percentages are measured against a typical market price benchmark that the scheme itself defines, not against the quote you’d have got from a decent local firm. A 41% discount off a generous benchmark and a 10% discount off a tight one can land on exactly the same number.
So ignore the percentage entirely. There’s only one figure that travels between quotes, and that’s pounds per kilowatt. Divide the total price by the system size in kWp. That’s it. That’s the whole technique.
Switch Together’s own resource hub put the average MCS-registered UK domestic install in early 2026 at £8,677, or roughly £1,686 per kW. That’s a fair number to hold them to. If your personal recommendation lands meaningfully above about £1,700 per kW on a straightforward roof, the discount headline isn’t doing you any good.
The audit nobody reads
What people actually paid
In June 2024, AECOM delivered an independent evaluation of Solar Together London to the Greater London Authority. Buried in it are the real prices three winning installers charged, band by band, set against the average cost of an installation in London at the same time. As far as I can tell nobody has put these in front of homeowners. They’re the most useful thing published about this scheme.
Read the first row carefully.
| Phase & installer | System size | London average | Scheme median | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 3 · Spirit Energy 2019–20 | 0–2 kWp | £2,025 | £2,625 | −29.6% |
| 2–4 kWp | £4,910 | £3,972 | 19.1% | |
| 4–6 kWp | £7,737 | £5,679 | 26.6% | |
| Over 6 kWp | £14,040 | £9,393 | 33.1% | |
| Phase 4 · GET UK 2020–21 | 0–2 kWp | £2,830 | £2,771* | 2.1% |
| 2–4 kWp | £4,394 | £3,796 | 13.6% | |
| 4–6 kWp | £7,037 | £5,109 | 27.4% | |
| Over 6 kWp | £17,624 | £9,940 | 43.6% | |
| Phase 5 · Solar Bureau 2021–22 | 0–2 kWp | £4,423 | £3,963* | 10.4% |
| 2–4 kWp | £7,369 | £5,608 | 23.9% | |
| 4–6 kWp | £11,841 | £7,424 | 37.3% | |
| Over 6 kWp | £16,385 | £12,764 | 22.1% |
* Maximum price shown — no median was available for these bands.
The discount scales with system size
Saving against the average London installation price, by size band and scheme phase. Below the line means the scheme cost more.
The pattern is consistent and it makes complete sense once you see it. An auction sets one price per size band. The fixed costs of an install — the scaffolding, the site visit, the DNO notification, the MCS paperwork — barely move whether you’re fitting six panels or sixteen. Bulk buying doesn’t compress those fixed costs much. It compresses the hardware, and hardware is a bigger share of a big system.
So the people who do best out of Switch Together are the ones putting up a large array. If you’re after a modest 2 kWp system on a small roof, the audit suggests you may do no better than a local firm, and possibly worse. That’s the opposite of what most coverage of this scheme implies.
Where the money comes from
The equipment spec gaps
A reverse auction rewards the lowest bid that still clears a quality threshold. So the quality threshold matters a great deal. AECOM went through iChoosr’s standard package spec against what you’d normally expect on a domestic roof. The list of gaps is longer than I’d like:
| Specification point | Scheme package | Typical domestic spec |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum panel efficiency | 18.1% | Above 20% |
| Minimum inverter efficiency | 96% | Above 98% |
| Light-induced degradation (LID) | Not referenced | Specified, under 2% |
| Potential-induced degradation (PID) | Not referenced | PID-resistant modules |
| Total harmonic distortion | Not referenced | Under 3% |
| Separate DC isolator | “In some cases” | Standard on rooftop installs |
| Inverter sizing checks | Not referenced | Carried out by installer |
| Cable sizing & voltage drop calcs | Not referenced | Standard design step |
| Manufacturer track record | Not specified | Typically 10+ years |
| Mounting frame warranty | Not specified | Stated in writing |
AECOM’s view was that some of the kit specified was below what you’d normally expect on a domestic roof, that the lower-quality inverters in particular would have reduced cost, and that the consequence “may be increased warranty claims and complaints in the future”. An installer on a Solar Together scheme outside London separately raised concerns about the equipment quality needed to win work at those prices.
I want to be fair here: a 96%-efficient inverter is not a broken inverter, and 18.1% is a floor, not a typical. Plenty of installs through this scheme will have used better kit than the minimum. But you are buying from a spec floor set by someone else, and the auction pushes bidders towards that floor. When your recommendation arrives, the panel and inverter model numbers are the first thing to look up, not the price. And when the scaffolding comes down, our snagging checklist is worth half an hour of your time, because an auction-won job is exactly the sort where a DC isolator or a cable run gets done to the minimum.
Five minutes, before the deposit
How to check your own offer
Take the total, divide by the system size in kWp, and compare it with what the rest of the market is charging. The government publishes the honest version of that number: DESNZ’s Solar PV cost data, drawn from the MCS installation database: prices actually paid on real jobs, not prices advertised.
| System size | Median £/kW | Mean £/kW | Installs in the sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–4 kW | £1,595 | £1,808 | 158,512 |
| 4–10 kW | £1,546 | £1,622 | 91,953 |
| 10–50 kW | £1,204 | £1,267 | 14,277 |
On a straightforward roof, anything comfortably under about £1,600 per kW is a decent price in 2026, with or without a scheme behind it. Past roughly £2,000 per kW you want a specific reason — a complex roof, scaffolding on three sides, premium kit, and you want it in writing. That’s the same test I’d apply to any quote, which is rather the point. For the longer version see our piece on what MCS pricing data really shows about £10k quotes.
The seven things to check before you accept
- Price per kW. Total ÷ kWp. Compare it with the table above and with one local quote.
- Named models. Panel, inverter and battery by brand and model number, with wattages. “High-quality panels” is not a specification.
- The installer’s live MCS certificate, under its exact trading name, covering solar PV specifically. Check it on the MCS register yourself rather than trusting a logo.
- What happens if the survey finds extra work. Ask in writing whether the price can rise, by how much, and whether you can walk away with the deposit back.
- Who backs the workmanship warranty if the installer stops trading, and for how many years. See the next section, because this one is not what you’d assume.
- An estimated annual output in kWh for your actual roof, with shading accounted for.
- A target install month, not “within six months”.
People search for “Solar Together grant” constantly. There’s no public money in your price — the saving comes from bulk buying. You own the system outright, which is genuinely better than any rent-a-roof arrangement, but you pay the full auction price. The real public support in 2026 is 0% VAT on installed solar and batteries until 31 March 2027, after which it reverts to 5%, and that applies whichever route you take. If you’re on a low income, check what’s actually available in grants first.
The part the council pages gloss over
Aftercare and warranties
This is where I’d spend your attention, because it’s where the scheme’s structure bites. Here’s the discrepancy I kept running into.
Solihull and Walsall both tell residents a Switch Together system comes with “a workmanship warranty of at least 10 years”. Switch Together’s own support pages set out something different: a six-year installer workmanship warranty, which explicitly does not cover the inverter or the panels. Those are not the same promise. Before you accept, get the workmanship term confirmed in writing for your specific offer, with the number of years and the name of whoever stands behind it.
The rest of the cover, as the scheme states it, is reasonable and roughly standard: a 12-year manufacturer’s warranty on the panels, a performance guarantee of at least 90% output for the first ten years and 80% for the fifteen after that, ten years on the string inverter and ten on the battery.
Who you actually claim from
Three different parties, depending on what’s broken, and none of them is your council:
| What’s gone wrong | Who you claim from | Still works if the installer folds? |
|---|---|---|
| Panel, inverter or battery fault | The manufacturer | Yes — provided the manufacturer is still trading |
| Bad workmanship, leaks, poor wiring | The installer | No — unless it’s insurance-backed |
| Installer gone, work unfinished | The IBG insurer, or your card provider | Yes — if you have the paperwork |
| Anything at all | Not iChoosr. Not the council. | — |
Your contract is with the installer, not with iChoosr and not with the council. AECOM made this point about the GLA itself — it was “one contractual relationship removed” from the installers, which limited what it could do when things went wrong. You’re one step further removed again.
MCS is mid-redevelopment, and every certified installer has to move to the new scheme by 31 March 2027. Consumer code membership — RECC or HIES — stops being automatically mandatory. Instead installers buy an MCS-approved financial protection product per job. In practice that means the protection attached to your install can now vary more between companies than it used to, so “they’re MCS certified” tells you less than it did. Our guide to what to do when an installer stops trading has the deposit-protection windows scheme by scheme, and the warranty breakdown covers each layer in turn.
One practical tip that costs nothing: pay at least part of the balance on a credit card. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes your card provider jointly liable for the full contract price between £100 and £30,000, even if only the deposit touched the card. On a £7,000 install, that’s the strongest protection available to you and it’s free.
The case everyone cites, and what it really shows
When it goes wrong
Most rounds pass without incident. Wiltshire has had more than 2,000 installations across five years. Cheshire, Warrington, Suffolk and Dorset run theirs annually without drama. But London’s scheme went badly wrong, and the audit is unusually candid about why.
In Phase 4, iChoosr appointed an installer called Green Energy Together (GET UK). AECOM found that iChoosr had ignored red flags raised by RECC — the consumer code had declined GET UK’s membership application, and proceeded with the appointment anyway. GET UK was then still awarded work in Phase 5 despite its Phase 4 delivery problems. It lost its MCS accreditation in early 2023 and went into administration.
The complaint rate tells the story plainly: under 10% in the early phases, then 22.7% in Phase 4 and 16.6% in Phase 5. The GLA approved up to £500,000 to support affected customers, including people whose deposits hadn’t been protected. London boroughs ended up fielding complaints themselves because the structure gave them nobody else to pass them to.
AECOM also flagged something structural worth knowing: HIES acts both as a consumer code for installers and as a provider of insurance-backed guarantees to customers, which the auditors described as a potential conflict of interest.
Registrations don’t become installations
Solar Together London, all five phases combined, 2018–2024.
The same audit benchmarked London against Solar Together schemes elsewhere, and London did noticeably worse. By March 2022, acceptance rates were 11.1% in London against 19.0% elsewhere, and of those who accepted, 31% went on to install in London against 67% in other regions. AECOM attributed much of that to London-specific problems — dense streets, complex roofs, loft conversions, awkward scaffolding and access, parking and permits. If you’re in Dorset or Cheshire, London’s numbers are not your numbers.
The honest lesson isn’t “avoid this scheme”. It’s that the auction picks your price, but you are still trusting one installer you didn’t choose and can’t swap. So check that company yourself — Companies House, MCS register, reviews filed in the last twelve months, exactly as you would with any firm. Our installer vetting checklist works just as well on an installer handed to you as one you found.
Where it runs
Which councils run rounds
This is organised council by council, so whether you can join depends entirely on your postcode and your timing. Most areas run one round a year, opening somewhere between late winter and midsummer. Here’s what ran in 2026, with the registration deadlines each council published.
| Area | Lead authority | 2026 registration closed |
|---|---|---|
| Worcestershire | Worcestershire County Council | 26 April 2026 |
| Solihull | Solihull MBC | 26 April 2026 |
| Sandwell | Sandwell MBC | 26 April 2026 |
| Wokingham | Wokingham Borough Council | 3 July 2026 |
| West Berkshire | West Berkshire Council | 24 July 2026 |
| Windsor & Maidenhead | RBWM | 24 July 2026 |
| Lincolnshire | Lincolnshire County Council | 24 July 2026 |
| Suffolk | Suffolk County Council | 24 July 2026 |
| Wiltshire & Swindon | Wiltshire Council | 7 August 2026 |
| Cheshire & Warrington | Cheshire East, Cheshire West, Warrington | 25 September 2026 |
| King’s Lynn & West Norfolk | Borough Council of King’s Lynn | 25 September 2026 |
| Dorset | Dorset Council (2026/27 phase) | 25 September 2026 |
| Cardiff Capital Region | Monmouthshire CC and partners | 1 June 2026 |
| Vale of Glamorgan | Vale of Glamorgan Council | 2026 round run |
| Walsall | Walsall Council | 2026 round run |
| Sunderland | Sunderland City Council | 2026 round run |
| North East Lincolnshire | NE Lincolnshire Council | 2026 round run |
| London | Greater London Authority | Programme ended 2024 |
Every 2026 round I could find has now closed. None of the councils I checked had published a 2027 date by late October 2026, which is normal. They tend to announce in the new year.
I couldn’t find a Scottish round. North of the border the useful routes are ECO4 if you qualify, which closes on 31 December 2026, and Home Energy Scotland’s interest-free loan — note that its direct solar PV grant closed to new applications back in June 2024, whatever older articles still say. Our Scotland grants guide has the current position. Northern Ireland has no Switch Together scheme either, though at roughly £1,303 per kW it already has the cheapest installed prices in the UK by some margin. Wales does have rounds, run through the Cardiff Capital Region authorities, the Vale of Glamorgan and Newport, alongside the Welsh schemes.
If there’s no round near you, the deadline that actually matters more is the VAT one. 0% on installed solar and batteries runs until 31 March 2027, then goes back to 5% — worth roughly £375 on a £7,500 system. Waiting a year for a group buy that might save you nothing on a small array, and losing the VAT relief doing it, is a poor trade.
My verdict
Switch Together is a legitimate, well-established scheme and registering costs you nothing. I’d tell anyone with an open round nearby to put their details in. The offer that comes back is free information about your own roof, and you can walk away from it.
But I’d stop short of the usual advice, which is to treat it as automatically the cheapest route. The evidence says it isn’t, uniformly. It’s strongest on larger arrays and weakest on small ones — on the smallest band the audit found a scheme price nearly 30% above the local average. It sets your price before anyone looks at your roof, it hands you an installer you can’t change, and the workmanship cover in its own FAQ is shorter than several councils advertise.
So do both. Register, and get one proper local quote in parallel. When the recommendation lands, divide by the kilowatts and compare. If the scheme wins, you’ve lost nothing by checking. If it doesn’t, you’ve saved yourself from a discount that was only ever a discount against somebody else’s benchmark.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions
Is Switch Together the same as Solar Together?
Yes. Switch Together is a trading name of iChoosr Ltd, and councils including Solihull, Wiltshire, Walsall, Monmouthshire and Windsor and Maidenhead all describe their current scheme as previously known as Solar Together. The solar side works exactly as it did before. The rebrand widened the scheme to cover heat pumps, EV chargers and energy tariffs alongside panels and battery storage.
Is Switch Together actually cheaper than getting my own quotes?
It depends almost entirely on system size. The independent AECOM evaluation of the London scheme found savings against the local average ranging from 43.6% on arrays over 6 kWp down to just 2.1% on systems under 2 kWp, and in one phase the smallest band cost 29.6% more than the London average. Council discount headlines of 20% to 41% are measured against the scheme’s own benchmark price, not against a real quote for your house. Divide your offer by the system size in kWp and compare that with one local quote before you accept.
What happens if my Switch Together installer goes bust?
Your contract is with the installer, not with iChoosr or your council, so neither of them is liable. Manufacturer warranties on the panels, inverter and battery are unaffected and you claim those directly from the manufacturer. The installer’s workmanship warranty normally ends with the company unless it was insurance-backed, in which case you claim from the named insurer. If you paid any part of the cost on a credit card and the total was between £100 and £30,000, Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes your card provider jointly liable for the full amount.
Sources and notes
Price and performance data for the scheme is from AECOM, GLA 82284 — Solar Together London Programme Evaluation, Final Report, prepared for the Greater London Authority, 27 June 2024 (Tables 6–8, 12, 13 and 15, and section 4.2.4). Market cost benchmarks are from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Solar photovoltaic (PV) cost data, 2025/26 release, published 28 May 2026, derived from the MCS Installation Database. Scheme terms, deposit and warranty details are from Switch Together’s own support pages and from the council scheme pages for Solihull, Walsall, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Dorset, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Warrington, West Berkshire, Wokingham, Windsor and Maidenhead, Lincolnshire, Sandwell, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, Monmouthshire and the Vale of Glamorgan, all checked on 23 October 2026. Electricity prices reference Ofgem’s price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026 (£1,723 a year for a typical dual-fuel direct debit household, averaging 26.32p per kWh). 0% VAT on installed residential solar and battery storage applies until 31 March 2027 under HMRC’s energy-saving materials relief.
Registration deadlines change every year and are set by each council, not by us. Always register through the link on your own council’s website rather than via a cold call or a doorstep visit using the scheme’s name.
