Winter Heating Payment
Winter Heating Payment payments and expenditure since February 2023.
Data
Winter Heating Payment
Description
Information on Winter Heating Payment, which was introduced in February 2023 by Social Security Scotland. Data covers payments made from from February 2023 to 31st March 2026 . Breakdowns include local authority and client age. Additional information about clients, including qualifying benefit, application method and month as well as breakdown of applications by outcome and month, channel and processing times, is available in the full publication and tables.
Full publication and tables covering Winter Heating Payment are available on the Social Security Scotland website.
Metadata
| Theme | Economic Activity, Benefits and Tax Credits |
|---|---|
| Organisation | Social Security Scotland |
| License | UK Open Government Licence (OGL) |
| Published | |
| Last updated | |
| Next update | 1 Jun 2027 |
| Update frequency | annual |
| Reference period | 2022 to 2026 |
| Geographic coverage | Council Areas, Non-Standard Geography Categories, Country |
| Contact | MI@socialsecurity.gov.scot |
Data quality
Completeness
This publication presents data for Winter Heating Payment cases where a payment value had been recorded on the case management system by 31 March 2026. This accounts for over 99% of the cases that were on the case management system at this date. A recorded payment value indicates that a client had been found to be eligible, and that an instruction had been sent to Social Security Scotland finance to make a payment.
The remaining less than 1% of cases that are not included in this publication may not have had payment values for a variety of reasons. For example, the client was found to be ineligible or Social Security Scotland needs further information.
Uniqueness
Not assessed
Consistency
Winter Heating Payment replaced Cold Weather Payment which was provided by the Department for Work and Pensions to clients living in Scotland. Official statistics published by the Department for Work and Pensions for 2022/23 do not include Scotland. These statistics can be found at: Cold Weather Payment estimates: 2022 to 2023.
Statistics for 2021/22, which did include Scotland, are also available at: Cold Weather Payment estimates: 2021 to 2022.
Timeliness
This dataset has been published in parallel with the full publication on the Social Security Scotland website. This is an annual publication series. We aim to publish future analysis on a regular basis, as official statistics.
Validity
Not assessed
Accuracy
The data comes from 100% data cut of the Winter Heating Payment cases on the Social Security Scotland case management system.
Number of payments have been rounded to the nearest five payments for disclosure control. Value of payments have been rounded to the nearest £500 for disclosure control. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest 1%. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five payments.
Quality management
Age
Age of clients is based on age at the start of the qualifying week.
Local Authority
Payments are assigned to local authority by the residential postcode of the client, using a Scottish Government lookup file. In this publication, all postcodes provided matched the lookup file. A small number of client's postcodes were missing.
Additional details
Revisions
Revisions and corrections to previously published statistics are dealt with in accordance with the Scottish Government Statistician Group corporate policy statement on revisions and corrections - a copy of which is available on the Scottish Government website.
Confidentiality policy
This data contains no sensitive, personal information. Data has been rounded and suppressed for disclosure control.