Which I absolutely don't get. I just had a mini split unit installed at our house here in North East, paid £1500 total with installation, and damn that thing throws a lot of heat - I literally stopped using our gas boiler, it's more efficient(and cheaper!!!!) to use this unit for heating than to burn gas. It uses like 800W of power when running but produces ~4kW of heat.

I imagine the "proper" heat pump costs a lot because it has to integrate into your central heating - heat and pump water etc. But I also imagine for a lot of people in this country 2-3 mini splits like this one would be absolutely sufficient, wouldn't cost a fortune, and would save them money(plus they can be used for cooling when needed).