If you are eligible for this year’s Winter Fuel Payment, then you can contact the benefits department today if you have not received confirmation from the DWP
Brits who have not received their Winter Fuel Payment letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can put in a claim from today.
If you are eligible for this year’s Winter Fuel Payment, then you can contact the benefits department today if you have not received confirmation from the DWP. Over one million older Brits started to receive the winter support payment – worth either £200 or £300 – from November 25 last year.
Before the cash was paid into eligible pensioners’ accounts, the DWP sent them letters in October and November telling them how much they would get and which bank account it was going to be paid into. The DWP says most people eligible for this year’s payment were paid between November and December.
However, if you are eligible for the money but have not received this letter, you can contact the DWP Winter Fuel Payment Centre from January 29.
The cash payment is given to pensioner households to help with the higher cost of energy over the colder months. Earlier this year, the Labour government means-tested the DWP benefit, so instead of all pensioners over the age of 66 getting the payment as was the case before, only those claiming certain benefits will. To get a Winter Fuel Payment this year, you must have been born before September 23, 1958 and claiming one of the following benefits between September 16 and September 22, 2024:
As Pension Credit can be backdated by three months, low-income pensioners had until December 21 to submit a claim for It, which would make them eligible for this year’s payment if successful. But, the DWP was hit by delays in issuing the cash following a massive backlog of Pension Credit applications.
According to the latest official figures, there was a backlog of 90,000 unprocessed claims as of mid-November, with around 9,000 being processed each week. This means there are likely still some Brits who are waiting for their confirmation letter from the DWP. However, the DWP says if you’ve applied for Pension Credit but have not received a decision yet, you do not need to contact the Winter Fuel Payment Centre about your eligibility. Other Brits who are still waiting for the letter can contact the DWP’s Winter Fuel Payment Centre on 0800 731 0160.
If you are still waiting for a letter, then it’s important to remember that you won’t be eligible for a Winter Fuel Payment if you lived in a care home for the whole time from June 24 to September 22, 2024. Although, you can still be eligible if you live in a care home on a temporary basis, which is less than 13 weeks by the end of the qualifying period.
You also won’t be eligible if you’ve been in hospital getting free treatment for more than a year, if you needed permission to enter the UK and your granted leave says that you cannot claim public funds, or if you are in prison for the whole of the week of September 16 to September 22, 2024.
If you live abroad, you’ll need to make a claim for a Winter Fuel Payment, as you will not get it automatically. You must have moved to an eligible EEA country or Switzerland before December 31, 2020 and be covered by the Withdrawal Agreement, to get a Winter Fuel Payment. You must also have a genuine and sufficient link to the UK and be claiming a “means-tested benefit” in the country where you live. If this is you, then you have until March 31, 2025, to make a claim.
The reference for the payment in your bank account will be your National Insurance number followed by “DWP WFP”. For example, it would look like: “QQ123456B DWP WFP”.
