Also had a look at electrical heating options again recently. Everywhere I've lived that burns fossil fuels to generate heat has been plagued by costly maintenance. At my current place, not unique to these issues, I've now spent an average of £175 a year on repairs (£1230 total over 7 years). In contrast, I lived for 10 years in a place with electrical heating and never had to do any maintenance whatsoever. Certainly gas is cheaper to run in terms of the price per unit of energy consumed, but if you factor in the maintenance and the hassle factor of taking time off to be in for the repair people, then I'm not convinced there's such a big difference. If you ask a boiler repair person about switching to electricity though, they'll say they strongly recommend against it, but part of me wonders if that's because they have a vested interest in keeping people using the high maintenance options. I used to joke that the only reliable thing about my boiler was the revenue stream it generated for the repair people.

Underfloor electrical heating is apparently a lot more efficient than radiators, e.g. because you only need to run them at a much lower temperature. If you combine with things like ground source heat pumps and solar panels, the electric heating proposition looks a lot more appealing.

That said, the conclusion I came to is that for an old place that doesn't otherwise need major work, it just isn't worth the expense of making the switch. It might be that if I were to move somewhere that needed a complete refurbishment anyway, then I would. Even then, with most homes, at least in cities like London, being flats rather than houses, then things like solar panels and heat pumps become much more difficult if not impossible to arrange.