
Warm Home Discount explained as 2.7million households set for £150 energy help
Millions more households will be eligible for £150 off their energy bills this winter as the Warm Home Discount scheme is set to be expanded.
The Warm Home Discount gives you £150 directly off your electricity bill. In new plans confirmed this week, an extra 2.7 million households will be entitled to the Warm Home Discount this winter. This would increase the number of eligible people to over six million in total.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: 'Millions of families will get vital support with the cost of living this coming winter, demonstrating this government's commitment to put money in people's pockets through our Plan for Change.'
What is the Warm Home Discount?
The £150 discount is applied to your energy account, as opposed to a direct cash payment into your bank. It is normally applied between October and March.
If you're a prepayment meter, you will be sent a top-up voucher. If you live in England and Wales and you are eligible for the Warm Home Discount, you should receive it automatically. The rules are different in Scotland, where you may need to apply.
Who is eligible for the Warm Home Discount - and how is it changing?
If you live in England and Wales, you currently qualify for the Warm Home Discount if you get the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit, or you claim means-tested benefits and have high energy costs.
But the Government has now confirmed the high-cost-to-heat threshold for the Warm Home Discount in England and Wales, meaning you will now qualify just based on the benefits you claim.
If you live in Scotland, you qualify if you get the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit, or you claim a means-tested benefit. Your electricity supplier may have extra eligibility criteria.
If you claim Pension Credit in Scotland, then you will get the Warm Home Discount automatically - otherwise, you will need to apply. The level of spend available in Scotland for suppliers is also increasing from this winter.
How many more people will get Warm Home Discount?
The number of families who will receive the discount for the first time, broken down by region, include:
North East England: 100,000
North West England: 280,000
Yorkshire and the Humber: 210,000
East Midlands: 160,000
West Midlands: 270,000
East of England: 250,000
London: 570,000
South East England: 350,000
South West England: 220,000
Wales: 110,000
Scotland: 240,000
Other ways to cut your energy bill
If you're struggling, your first step should be to contact your energy provider and ask what help is available. You should ideally do this before you fall behind on a payment.
Some of the tailored support you may be offered includes a payment plan, payment breaks and affordable debt repayments. It is also worth asking them if you're definitely on their cheapest deal.
If you're a prepayment energy customer and you're worried about running out of power, you should be able to access emergency credit. This is usually worth between £5 and £10, but some may offer more than this - for example, Utilita gives customers up to £15.
You should also check if your energy firm offers hardship funds or grants that you don't need to pay back. For example, the British Gas Energy Trust offers help worth up to £2,000.
In the winter, there are Cold Weather Payments worth £25 that are issued when the average temperature is recorded as, or forecast to be, 0C or below over seven consecutive days.
This is available to people on certain benefits. There are also Winter Fuel Payments worth up to £300 for pensioner households. Finally, the following charities can offer you support if you are struggling to pay for your energy, or if you are in energy debt:
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Thames Water faces rocketing demand for supplies
Thames Water has warned that plans to build 100 new data centres across London and the South East will pile more pressure on its creaking infrastructure. The utility giant said it had identified 108 'hyper or large' data centres that will drive up demand in its region, with bosses suggesting it will have to manage water supplies carefully to ensure there is no impact on households. Each data centre is equivalent to thousands of homes being added to a water network, meaning the pipeline of new data centres is on par with a new small city being built. In its annual report, Thames Water said that building data centres 'needs to be carefully managed from a demand and UK growth perspective'. The company, which is battling to avoid nationalisation amid pressure from a £17bn debt pile, has previously raised the prospect of rationing water use for data centres or charging more at peak times. Data centres contain giant racks of computer servers that need to be cooled to avoid overheating, often with water piped in. The facilities are crucial to the rise of artificial intelligence and are a key priority for Sir Keir Starmer's growth push. However, the vast number being built has sparked concern among water companies such as Thames Water, which is now engaging with the Government to prevent potential shortages in future. 'The south-east of England is a water-stressed region and data centres can use a vast amount of water, equivalent to the usage of thousands of homes at peak draw,' a Thames Water spokesman said. 'With a large proportion of the proposed data centres earmarked to be built in the Thames Water region, it brings a challenge between safeguarding our finite resources while supporting the UK's growth strategy. 'It is important that we work collaboratively to meet this challenge and to avoid exacerbating water stress and impacting service for customers and the environment.' 'We are engaging with the Government regarding the challenge of water demand related to cooling data centres and how this can be mitigated. We are also working with a number of data centre providers about opportunities to reduce demand through innovation.' A corridor of land between London and Slough, much of which is served by Thames Water, contains Britain's densest collection of data centres. An independent review of the water sector last week cited data centres as one of the factors that are likely to mean water bills rising by 30pc over the next five years. The report, by Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, said that national infrastructure bodies should be consulted when deciding where to build them. The Government has welcomed investment in new data centres, including designating them as critical national infrastructure. Thames Water last week started a hosepipe ban for more than 1 million people in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire. The company is also seeking to agree a rescue deal with creditors, but has warned it may fall into special administration if talks between the lenders and regulator Ofwat fail.


Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Britain risks following France into a terrifying debt crisis
Last week brought more bad news about the UK's public finances. June's figures for public sector borrowing came in at £20.7bn, well above the OBR's forecast and City expectations. What's more, £16.4bn of this was accounted for by debt interest payments. Yes, that's right: £16.4bn in one month. We are borrowing enormous sums to pay the interest on past borrowings of enormous sums. We are getting dangerously close to what economists call 'the debt trap'. This is when, under the pressure of rising debt interest payments, the debt ratio starts to explode. It goes without saying that it is good to avoid this, if you can. But can we? Be warned, you may need a ready supply of hot towels for this next bit. The key players in the debt drama are: the budget deficit, the debt ratio, the growth rate of the economy in money terms (which is equal to the real growth rate plus the rate of inflation) and the rate at which the Government can borrow. If the rate at which the Government borrows exceeds the growth of the economy (in nominal terms), then debt interest payments and the overall debt will rise as a share of GDP. In order to stop this process from leading to an ever-higher debt ratio, the Government must run a primary budget surplus (meaning a surplus on its budget without interest payments), requiring higher taxes and/or cuts in government spending. And the higher the initial debt ratio, the larger the surplus needs to be to stabilise the debt ratio. The debt dynamics are merciless. When emerging market countries become stuck in the debt trap, the result is usually default or much higher inflation, or both. Remarkably, given our pitifully low to non-existent real growth rate, the nominal growth of GDP (i.e. expressed in money terms), exceeds the average rate at which the Government borrows by a small margin. Phew! But this is somewhat misleading because the average cost of government debt is heavily influenced by past borrowing, some of which was at lower interest rates. When this debt matures, there is a risk that it will be refinanced at higher interest rates. So we are currently just avoiding the debt trap, but with the deficit so large, the debt ratio is still rising. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the gloom is still gathering about the fiscal prospects that the Chancellor faces in the Budget this autumn. It hardly makes our position any better, but we are not alone. Amid all this domestic pessimism, few people have noticed what is happening to our close neighbour across the channel. France is facing a fiscal predicament every bit as serious as ours. For a start, France's ratio of government debt to GDP is higher than ours – 113pc of GDP compared with our 100pc. And its deficit is higher too – 5.8pc last year compared to our 5.1pc. And ours is set to be just under 4pc this year. In both countries, GDP growth has been weak, and prospects are clouded with uncertainty. The one area where France is better positioned is the cost of borrowing, and this really does show the weakness of the UK's position. Whereas 10-year bond yields here are 4.6pc, in France they stand at about 3.5pc, similar to other euro-zone members. In this regard, however, something extraordinary has been happening. French yields have been converging on Italy's. The gap between them is now only 0.18pc, the lowest for almost 20 years. It doesn't seem too fanciful to imagine that French yields will soon surpass Italy's. Admittedly, after a recent period of comparatively strong growth, it looks as though Italian economic growth is set to be slower than growth in France, returning to the long-established norm. That certainly does not make the job of stabilising the public finances any easier. And, at 135pc of GDP, Italy's debt ratio is a good deal higher than in France. But Italy possesses two striking advantages. First, its fiscal deficit is only 3.4pc of GDP, compared to France's 5.8pc. And excluding interest payments (the so-called primary budget), it is in a surplus of 0.5pc, compared to France's deficit of 3.7pc. The result is that to stabilise the debt ratio, Italy needs to tighten the budget deficit (through a mixture of higher taxes and expenditure cuts) by only 0.5pc of GDP. By contrast, to stabilise her debt ratio, France needs to tighten fiscal policy by over 3pc of GDP by 2027. Italy's second advantage is surprising to anyone who has followed Italian politics over the past 80 years. She seems to be more politically stable than France. Giorgia Meloni looks likely to be Italy's first post-war prime minister to complete their term. In France, there have been six prime ministers since 2020, and the current incumbent, Francois Bayrou, who heads a minority government, could be ousted any time soon. He recently announced a plan to tighten French fiscal policy by 1.5pc of GDP. By comparison, Rachel Reeves' Budget last October increased taxes by 1.2pc of GDP, but this was more than offset by increases in public expenditure. There is little chance of the proposed French tightening getting through parliament unscathed. The failure to pass a budget for next year, leading to the fall of the present government, could cause French bond yields to flare up. And then there is the presidential election in 2027. On voting intentions in the first round, Jordan Bardella, the likely candidate of Marine Le Pen's National Rally, is well ahead of the other candidates. Obviously, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. But if the markets were to view a victory for the National Rally as likely, then they would surely send French bond yields much higher, thereby putting France in a dangerous fiscal position. We cannot gloat. There but for the grace of God go all of us.

The National
4 hours ago
- The National
Labour's 'nuclear tax' to cost Scots £300m to fund Sizewell C
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has imposed a new levy on energy bills to fund the spiralling costs of the Sizewell C power station in Suffolk. Billpayers will be charged an extra £12 per year to fund the project, which has almost doubled in price to £38 billion. The UK Government has also committed to a loan facility worth £36.6bn, which means the total cost could top £47.7bn. That is more than the final cost of Hinkley Point C, which Greenpeace once dubbed "the most expensive object on Earth". READ MORE: Quarter of Keir Starmer's Cabinet blasted Donald Trump's last UK trip It comes despite Labour's election pledge to cut energy bills, with the energy price cap rising consistently since October. Graham Leadbitter (below, left), the SNP's energy spokesperson, said 'This toxic overspend now totals £48bn and Anas Sarwar has serious questions to answer as to whether he thinks it's acceptable for Scots to foot the bill through higher energy bills – it is an absolute disgrace that energy rich Scotland will see Scots face higher energy bills because of a nuclear plant running over budget in Labour-run England. (Image: Jeff) 'The Labour Party promised they'd cut energy bills by £300 yet they've soared on their watch – now we have the absurd situation where they've chosen to pile money into extortionate nuclear energy and are asking Scots to pick up the tab. 'Independent analysis shows this will cost Scottish households £300m in higher bills through a decade-long 'nuclear tax' all the while Scottish Labour refuse to acknowledge the white elephant in the room that they support these disastrous plans.' Leadbitter said that Scotland 'produces far more electricity that we can hope to use and our future is in renewables' and so had no interest in nuclear power. READ MORE: Trans toilet rules 'may force Scottish museums to close' He added: 'We were told Grangemouth refinery in Scotland couldn't be saved, yet we see a refinery in England protected, a steel works in Scunthorpe bailed out and now a nuclear power plant running twice over budget – it's no wonder Scots are increasingly asking how long we stay tied to this so called 'Union of Equals'?' The UK Government was approached for comment.