Child Winter Heating Payment and Winter Heating Payment figures: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1: The number (or rough estimate) of eligible people remained still to be paid for the winter months of 2023-24.

Request for information 2: The number (or rough estimate) of claimants who received the benefit in the summer months of 2023-24.

Response

Request for information 1:

We have interpreted your request to mean the number of clients that have been identified as eligible for Child Winter Heating Payment and Winter Heating Payment in winter 2023/24 that have not yet been paid.

Child Winter Heating Payment (CWHP) now has a process in place to ensure anyone who is retrospectively eligible is identified and paid without the client needing to contact Social Security Scotland and this has resulted in an additional 3066 children and young adults receiving CWHP for 2023-24.

For Winter Heating Payment (WHP) there were an additional 36,468 clients identified as being eligible for WHP in 2023-24 as a result of new information supplied by the Department for Work and Pensions. Social Security Scotland processed the information received and as a result payments started to be issued to clients from Monday 7 October 2024. The majority of payments will be in clients bank accounts by Thursday 10 October. A small number of records could not be used as they were missing bank details or some other information that we require. These records are now being processed manually for payment.

Request for information 2:

Summer Month	Child Winter Heating Payment	Winter Heating Payment
June 2024	557	99
July 2024	56	46
August 2024	35	45

The above Child Winter Heating Payments (CWHP) were made as a result of an Adult Disability Payment or Child Disability Payment being approved and backdated to the date the application was received. This has resulted in these clients becoming retrospectively eligible for a CWHP. Social Security Scotland undertake regular checks to identify those clients whose backdated qualifying benefit covers the Child Winter Heating Payment qualifying week. This ensures that these eligible clients are automatically paid.

The figures provided are management information that has not been quality assured to the same standard as the official statistics publication and is subject to change.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.