Cold Weather Payment scheme period ends

The Cold Weather Payment scheme ran from 1 November 2021 to 31 March 2022, and that period has now ended¹. The scheme pays £25 for each seven-day period of very cold weather between 1 November and 31 March, and payments are made automatically to households receiving certain benefits².

Under the scheme, a payment is triggered when the average temperature in an area is recorded as, or forecast to be, zero degrees Celsius or below over seven consecutive days². The scheme links postcode districts to weather stations that submit daily reports to the Met Office, and the average temperature at the relevant station must meet that threshold for payments to be triggered for claimants living in linked postcodes³. Payments are made within 14 working days of each cold period and go into the same bank or building society account as the recipient's benefit payments². Cold Weather Payments do not affect other benefits, and no application is needed: eligible households are paid automatically².

Eligibility is set out by benefit. Households usually qualify if they receive Pension Credit, or income-related Employment and Support Allowance and are in the work-related activity group or support group². Universal Credit claimants usually qualify where none of the adults on the claim are employed or self-employed, and one of a set of further conditions applies; those with a disabled child amount in their claim are eligible whether employed or not². Support for Mortgage Interest recipients may also qualify where certain additional conditions are met². The Commons Library briefing of 26 February 2026 summarises the same position: payments go to certain recipients of means-tested benefits in England, Wales and Northern Ireland during periods of very cold weather³.

"You'll get £25.00 for each seven-day period of very cold weather between 1 November and 31 March."

The scheme does not operate across the whole of the UK on the same basis. A new benefit, the Winter Heating Payment, replaced the Cold Weather Payment in Scotland from winter 2022/23; it is a single annual payment of £59.75 for winter 2025/26, and unlike the Cold Weather Payment, eligibility does not depend on a period of cold weather where the household lives³. The Scottish Government also introduced Child Winter Heating Assistance in 2020³.

Why it matters for households

Cold Weather Payments are one of the few forms of energy support tied directly to what the weather does where a household lives, rather than to a fixed annual date. For a home on a low income, a run of very cold days converts into a cash payment within about a fortnight, paid into the same account as the household's benefits and without any effect on those benefits². Because the payment is automatic, the practical consequence of the scheme closing is simply that no further triggers can occur until it reopens. The scheme is separate from the grants and schemes landscape more broadly, and from closed payment schemes such as the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive, which paid for renewable heating installations rather than cold-weather periods.

What happens next

The Cold Weather Payment scheme will reopen on 1 November 2026 and run to 31 March 2027². No reopening date for the 2022/23 winter is given in the sources for this period. The Commons Library briefing records that, from April 2026, both the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments in England will be replaced by a new Crisis and Resilience Fund, to be delivered by local authorities, and that from January 2026 Ofgem will begin regulating heat networks³. It also records that the Warm Home Discount scheme will continue across Great Britain for a further five years to winter 2030/31³.

Sources3 cited

1. Energy Crisis - What's happening? | Gas and Electricity Company | ScottishPower, scottishpower.co.uk
2. Cold Weather Payment | nidirect, nidirect.gov.uk
3. [](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06163/SN06163.pdf), researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk