What does the change to the winter fuel payment mean?
After months of speculation the government has announced that it will reinstate the winter fuel payment to most pensioners in England and Wales.
Under the new rules, any pensioner with an income of up to £35,000 a year will be eligible for the full allowance, while anyone on more will have to pay back their share.
The payment is worth £200 a year to households where both pensioners are aged under 80 years old, and £300 if there is a person aged 80 or over.
A pensioner aged 85 who lives alone will get £300, as will a couple of the same age.
The new system will mean these payments are made automatically to those receiving a state pension. There will be no need to claim the money.
No. The threshold applies to individuals, not households. A couple who qualify for a £200-a-year payment will get £100 each. If one has an income of more than £35,000 a year and the other does not, the higher earner will have £100 clawed back while the other one is allowed to keep the money.
In a couple where one person is aged 80, they will receive £200 and the other will receive £100. The person over 80 will repay £200 if their income is more than £35,000.
This will create some quirks. A single pensioner, living alone, will repay the full £200 or £300 if their income is more than £35,000, while a couple with an income of £69,000 would keep all the money.
Two households with the same incomes and one person aged over 80 could have to repay different sums depending on whether it is the older or younger person who receives more than £35,000.
For most pensioners, money will be taken through the pensioner's tax code and applied to their income the next year. Those who already file a tax return for other reasons may find it is added to it, but it is not yet clear if that will be the case.
The same is true when someone dies. The government says it will not make families do a return or pursue them for the winter fuel payment. However, if they have to do a return for someone who has died for other reasons, it is not clear if they will have to declare the payment.
There is a potential for problems if someone retires part-way through a tax year and earns more than £35,000 because they are still getting their salary, then drops well below that the next year – they will be faced with repaying the payment when they are on a lower income.
No. The new means-testing will take into account income only, not savings or the value of any property. A person with £1m in the bank would still qualify for the payment with an income less than £35,000.
The Scottish government gives out a pension-age winter heating payment. Last winter this was restricted to only those people who qualified for one of a handful of benefits including pension credit. This will change next winter, and the payment will be given more widely.
Northern Ireland has a winter fuel payment and seems likely to move in line with England and Wales.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
22 minutes ago
- Reuters
Vance says Trump doesn't want long-term feud with Musk
WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump was frustrated with billionaire Elon Musk, but doesn't want a long-term feud with the entrepreneur and big campaign donor, Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday. Vance told reporters that he has spoken to both Musk and Trump about trying to make sure Musk is supportive of the president, adding that the Trump team was grateful for what Musk did early in the process of making government more efficient. Musk on Wednesday said he regretted some of the social media posts he had made about Trump, saying they had gone "too far," a gesture the U.S. president described as "very nice," in the latest sign of a tentative reconciliation between the two.
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
Fact check: 2025 spending review claims
This round-up of claims from the 2025 spending review has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. On Wednesday Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered the Labour Government's first spending review, outlining its spending plans for the next few years. We've taken a look at some of the key claims. How much is spending increasing by? At the start of her speech Ms Reeves announced that 'total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3% a year in real terms'. That headline figure doesn't tell the full story, however. Firstly, 2.3% is the average annual real-terms growth in total departmental budgets between 2023/24 and 2028/29. That means it includes spending changes that have already been implemented, for both the current (2025/26) and previous (2024/25) financial years. The average annual increase between this year and 2028/29 is 1.5%. Therefore, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said, 'most departments will have larger real-terms budgets at the end of the Parliament than the beginning, but in many cases much of that extra cash will have arrived by April'. Secondly, it's worth noting that the 2.3% figure includes both day-to-day (Resource DEL) and investment (Capital DEL) spending. Capital spending (which funds things like infrastructure projects) is increasing by 3.6% a year on average in real terms between 2023/24 and 2029/30, and by 1.8% between 2025/26 and 2029/30. Day-to-day departmental budgets meanwhile are seeing a smaller average annual real-terms increase – of 1.7% between 2023/24 and 2028/29 and 1.2% between 2025/26 and 2028/29. Which departments are the winners and losers? Ms Reeves touted substantial spending increases in some areas (for example, the 3% rise in day-to-day NHS spending in England), but unsurprisingly her statement did not focus on areas where spending will decrease. Changes to Government spending are not uniform across all departments, and alongside increases in spending on things like the NHS, defence and the justice system, a number of Government departments will see their budgets decrease in real terms. Departments facing real-terms reductions in overall and day-to-day spending include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (this factors in reductions in aid spending announced earlier this year to offset increased defence spending), the Home Office (although the Government says the Home Office's budget grows in real terms if a planned reduction in asylum spending is excluded) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Did the Conservatives leave a '£22 billion black hole'? Ms Reeves made a claim we've heard a number of times since it first surfaced in July 2024 – that the previous Conservative government left a '£22 billion black hole in the public finances'. That figure comes from a Treasury audit that forecast a £22 billion overspend in departmental day-to-day spending in 2024/25, but the extent to which it was unexpected or inherited is disputed. The IFS said last year that some of the pressures the Government claimed contributed to this so-called 'black hole' could have been anticipated, but others did 'indeed seem to be greater than could be discerned from the outside'. An Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) review of its March 2024 forecast found an estimated £9.5 billion of additional spending pressures were known to the Treasury at that point in time, but were not known to the OBR as it prepared its forecast. It's true that this review didn't confirm the £22 billion figure, but it also did not necessarily prove that it was incorrect, because Labour's figure included pressures which were identified after the OBR prepared its forecast and so were beyond the scope of the OBR's review. We've written more about how the Government reached the figure of £22 billion in our explainer on this topic. How big is the increase in NHS appointments? Ms Reeves took the opportunity to congratulate Health Secretary Wes Streeting for delivering 'three-and-a-half million extra' hospital appointments in England. The Government has previously celebrated this as a 'massive increase', particularly in light of its manifesto pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments a year. Ms Reeves' claim was broadly accurate – data published last month shows there were 3.6 million additional appointments between July 2024 and February 2025 compared to the previous year. But importantly that increase is actually smaller than the 4.2 million rise that happened in the equivalent period the year before, under the Conservative government – as data obtained by Full Fact under the Freedom of Information Act and published last month revealed. What do announcements on asylum hotels, policing, nurseries and more mean for the Government's pledges? Ms Reeves made a number of announcements that appear to directly impact the delivery of several pre-existing Labour pledges, many of which we're already monitoring in our Government Tracker. (We'll be updating the tracker to reflect these announcements in due course, and reviewing how we rate progress on pledges as necessary). The Chancellor announced an average increase in 'police spending power' of 2.3% a year in real terms over the course of the review period, which she said was the equivalent of an additional £2 billion. However, as police budgets comprise a mix of central Government funding and local council tax receipts, some of this extra spending is expected to be funded by increases in council tax precepts. Ms Reeves said this funding would help the Government achieve its commitment of 'putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales', a pledge we're monitoring here. The spending review also includes funding of 'almost £370 million across the next four years to support the Government's commitment to deliver school-based nurseries across England', which Ms Reeves said would help the Government deliver its pledge to have 'a record number of children being school-ready'. The Chancellor also committed to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament, with an additional £200 million announced to 'accelerate the transformation of the asylum system'. When we looked last month at progress on the Government's pledge to 'end asylum hotels' we said it appeared off track, as figures showed the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels was higher at the end of March 2025 than it was when Labour came into Government.
Daily Mail
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
A reckless splurge we (and our children) will be paying off for years: Voters brace for tax hikes as Rachel Reeves embarks on unprecedented spending spree
Voters were last night braced for swingeing tax rises, after Rachel Reeves embarked on an unprecedented spending spree. In a return to Labour 's tax-and-spend approach, the Chancellor set out plans to 'invest' a staggering £4 trillion to fund 'the renewal of Britain'. She said the plans, which include another huge dollop of cash for the NHS, would end the 'destructive' austerity of the last government and boost economic growth. Labour strategists hope the costly gamble will pay off by cutting hospital waiting lists, improving the creaking infrastructure and pump-priming the economy. But experts warned the scale of the spending, coupled with the deteriorating public finances, will pave the way for another round of damaging tax rises this autumn. The Conservatives accused Ms Reeves of adopting a reckless 'spend now, tax later' approach. The Chancellor insisted her plans could be funded by the eye-watering tax rises she imposed last year. She refused to rule out tax rises this autumn, saying only that taxes 'won't have to go up to pay for what's in this Spending Review'. But the small print of yesterday's Treasury document already includes one significant new tax hike, with the Chancellor pencilling in council tax hikes that will add more than £350 to an average Band D bill by 2029 to help fund local services and the police. Asked to rule out further tax rises, Treasury minister Emma Reynolds said: 'I'm not ruling it in, I'm not ruling it out.' Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said Ms Reeves had 'completely lost control' of the public finances and the Spending Review was 'not worth the paper it is written on'. He predicted that a 'Corbynist catalogue' of tax rises would follow this autumn. Mr Stride told MPs: 'This is the spend now, tax later review, because the Chancellor knows that she will need to come back here in the autumn with yet more taxes, and a cruel summer of speculation awaits.' Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the public finances were so tight that the Chancellor would need further tax rises if 'anything at all goes wrong with the current economic forecasts'. Tom Clougherty, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said Ms Reeves had failed to address the crisis in the public finances, adding: 'We should brace ourselves for tax increases in the autumn, and a summer of speculation over exactly where they will fall.' On a day that will frame the political debate for the next election: Police chiefs warned of cuts to the front line, after Yvette Cooper emerged as one of the few losers from the spending bonanza; Ms Reeves piled further pressure on the Home Secretary by announcing a target to empty Britain's asylum hotels by the next election; The Chancellor said new funding for the health service would deliver an extra four million tests and procedures by the end of the decade; NHS chiefs said much of the extra cash would go to fund above-inflation pay rises for doctors and nurses; Ms Reeves suggested defence spending will be frozen at 2.6 per cent of GDP in the latter years of this parliament, despite Nato pressure to double it to 5 per cent; Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner secured a £39 billion boost for social housing after weeks of bruising battles with the Treasury; Ms Reeves ripped up the Treasury's value-for-money rules in order to pour cash into Red Wall seats where Labour is being challenged by Reform; She announced £15 billion for transport projects including a revamped 'Northern Powerhouse' rail project. Yesterday's Spending Review covers government plans for the next three years. Treasury sources said it totalled £4 trillion. Day-to-day spending is £190 billion higher than planned by the last Conservative government, while spending on capital projects is £113 billion higher. But the figures do not include the soaring welfare bill, or the cost of servicing the UK's debt mountain, which totals more than £100 billion a year. The review also relies on implausible plans to achieve efficiency savings of £12 billion a year. Any of these factors could tip Ms Reeves into breaking her fiscal rules later this year. She has yet to set out how she will pay for a U-turn on winter fuel payments, which is forecast to cost £1.25 billion. And she is under pressure from Labour MPs to end the two-child benefit cap at a cost of £3.5 billion and to scrap planned cuts to disability benefits totalling £5 billion. Labour's former shadow chancellor John McDonnell welcomed the spending on long-term capital investment but said Labour had to 'learn the lessons' of the winter fuel debacle and loosen the purse strings on welfare. He told Sky News: 'We cannot be seen as the austerity party by imposing cuts on the poorest in society... There will have to be tax increases – we need redistribution.' The spending package follows months of bitter Cabinet infighting over how to allocate government spending for the coming years. The Chancellor yesterday said her choices would deliver on the public's priorities. She said her 'driving purpose' was 'to make working people, in all parts of our country, better off'. But she acknowledged that many voters had yet to feel any difference from Labour's first year in office.
