In the coming months, UK households’ energy bills will rise by 11% on average (or £139/year) after wholesale gas prices have soared to all-time highs, according to the energy regulator Ofgem.
This sharp increase in energy bills will hit particularly hard to vulnerable households, who are already facing rising inflation and a reduction of £1,040/year on their Universal Credit.
Support for Vulnerable Customers
Our benefits calculator includes the following benefits to help vulnerable households to pay for their energy bills, including:
Warm Home Discount Scheme offers an annual discount of £140 towards energy bills.
Cold Weather Payment offers £25 for each week between November and March where the average temperature is zero degrees or below.
Winter Fuel Payment is an annual payment between £100 and £300.
Child Winter Heating Assistance is an annual payment to help with the costs of heating for disabled children. Households can get £202 per eligible child or young person.
Who can get this support?
Households qualify for these benefits if they get means-tested benefits such as Universal Credit, Pension Credit or Housing Benefit. Over a third of our users are entitled to £140 per year on benefits to help them to pay for their energy bills, but these benefits have a wider reach and impact on the following segments:
Single parents: 48% of single parents are entitled to energy-related benefits.
Households with a member with a disability: 54% of our users with a disabled member in their household are entitled to energy-related benefits.
Elderly households: 89% of our users older than 66 years old can earn on average £218 per year on energy-related benefits.
How we are helping
There are over 8mn vulnerable households not claiming benefits because they wrongly assume that they are not eligible or think that the application is too complicated. Therefore, these households are automatically disqualified for energy-related benefits.
Moreover, households still need to apply for these energy-related benefits and, more often than not, people miss them because they are not aware that these benefits even exist or do not know how to claim them.
You can use the advice.scot benefits calculator to make sure that you have access to all the support available to you, including benefits to help to pay for energy bills.
