The Winter Heating Assistance (Pension Age) (Scotland) Regulations 2024: scrutiny report

This report details our views on Pension Age Winter Heating Payment (PAWHP) as per the draft Winter Heating Assistance (Pension Age) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. The draft regulations introduce PAWHP, initially as a like-for-like replacement for the UK Government’s Winter Fuel Payment. PAWHP will have the same eligibility criteria and payment amounts, so that people who are currently eligible for a WFP continue to be so for the winter 2024/25.

We have recommended that entitlement rules could be further defined to outline what constitutes “free in-patient treatment” and the circumstances in which this would affect someone’s entitlement to PAWHP. The regulations also use the term “lead claimant” and we believe that the draft regulations would benefit from a definition of this term to reflect how Pension Credit and other relevant benefits operate.

While an individual would, generally, not need to apply for PAWHP because payment is usually made automatically, applications could be required in certain circumstances. We believe that close monitoring of how this works in practice would aid future public understanding of whether they can expect to be paid PAWHP automatically, or if they need to apply.

Under the Winter Fuel Payment scheme there were errors relating to whether an eligible pensioner lived with another eligible person, leading to both overpayments and underpayments. To mitigate the risk of similar errors going unnoticed when PAWHP is live, we have recommended that the Scottish Government should ensure provision of suitable information materials to allow people to check whether they should have received an award of PAWHP, but did not.

The Scottish Government will provide an option for people to opt out of receiving PAWHP if they feel they do not require the additional support. We have noted that the numbers opting out of receiving Pension Age Winter Heating Payment, and associated communications, processes and administration of opt-outs by Social Security Scotland, should be kept under review.

SCoSS asked a significant number of written questions of officials which received responses to a short timescale. We would like to express our thanks to officials for the detailed responses they have given which have been helpful in improving our understanding of decisions they have made and the policy intention behind the draft regulations.