Question reference: S6W-16208
- Asked by: Natalie Don, MSP for Renfrewshire North and West, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 24 March 2023
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Current status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Answered by Ben Macpherson on 27 March 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the payment of the Winter Heating Payment.
Answer
As at Friday 24 March, Social Security Scotland had concluded the final processing of client data and expect all automatic payments to be made by 31 March.
This means that throughout February and March almost 400,000 low income households will have automatically received £50 financial support towards their energy bills for this winter.
In line with our policy, every eligible household in Scotland will have received reliable support, regardless of the weather or where they live. At a time when energy bills are increasing, this investment of over £20 million will have provided an important financial contribution to many low income households, including those with disabled people, young children and older people, many of whom would not have received a £25 Cold Weather Payment in previous years.
Even though there is no statutory requirement to do so, I have already made the decision to uprate Winter Heating Payment in April 2023 by 10.1%, to £55.05, recognising the difficulties people are facing and will be facing going forward.
There are a very small number of payments requiring manual intervention prior to being processed, for example where we are awaiting further information from the eligible person, and Social Security Scotland is taking all measures to ensure that those final payments are made as soon as possible.
A first release of Official Statistics on Winter Heating Payment will be published on
6 June 2023 and then on an annual basis in future. These will be available on Social Security Scotland’s statistics publication page at: