Cold Weather Payment and Universal Credit: who gets the £25

A Cold Weather Payment is £25 for each 7-day period of very cold weather in your area. The amount is set by regulation 3 of the Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Regulations 1988, and it is paid out of the social fund, separately from your Universal Credit award. The scheme only runs in the winter period, which the regulations define as 1 November to 31 March, so for this winter that means 1 November 2026 to 31 March 2027. You can get more than one payment in a winter: each separate qualifying period at your weather station brings another £25, so, as an example, three triggers would mean £75. After each period of cold weather, gov.uk says you should be paid within 14 working days, into the same bank or building society account as your benefit. You do not apply. To give a sense of scale, DWP estimates that in England and Wales last winter (1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026) there were 34 triggers and around 1,447,000 payments, with about 4.4 million people eligible at the start of the season. Cold Weather Payments are not the same as Winter Fuel Payments, and they are not the same as the Warm Home Discount, which is a once-a-year £150 credit on your electricity bill.

A payment is triggered when the average temperature at the weather station linked to your postcode is recorded as, or forecast to be, 0°C or below over 7 consecutive days. The regulations define it precisely. The mean daily temperature is the average of that day's maximum and minimum at the site, and a recorded or forecasted period of cold weather is 7 consecutive days whose average mean daily temperature is 0°C or below. Because a forecast can trigger a payment, a cold week can trigger one before it has happened. Each day can only count towards one period, so the same cold days are not paid twice. The link between your home and a station is fixed in advance. Every postcode district has a designated primary site and may have a secondary site, with an alternative site used if neither can report (regulations 2 and 2A). For 2025/26 the Met Office used 71 weather stations across England and Wales, and each postcode district is assigned to the nearby station with the most representative winter climate, based on the latest 30-year average. The links are reviewed once a year and then fixed for the whole season, so two nearby places can be treated differently if they are linked to different stations. Three stations, Carlisle, Charterhall and Eskdalemuir, cover areas on both sides of the border with Scotland.

Being on Universal Credit is not enough by itself. You must have been awarded Universal Credit on at least one day of the cold period, and regulation 1A(3) adds that one of these must apply, in its own words: your family 'includes a member aged less than 5'; your award 'includes an amount under section 10(2) of the 2012 Act (child or qualifying young person who is disabled)'; or you have 'limited capability for work or limited capability for work and work-related activity as construed in accordance with regulations 39 and 40 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013'. The disabled child route means the disabled child addition at either rate, currently £164.79 or £514.71 a month, which the child element calculator works out. The health route turns on the outcome of your Work Capability Assessment, limited capability for work or LCWRA, not on which rate of health element you are paid, so either of the two LCWRA rates introduced in April 2026 counts. The health element calculator shows which rate you get, and the LCWRA assessment guide covers how the decision is made. For the child under 5 and health routes there is a further rule about work, covered next. Your home must also be in England or Wales (regulation 1A(8)), and unless your family includes a child under 5 you cannot be living in a care home or an independent hospital.

Yes, unless your award includes the disabled child addition. Regulation 1A(6), the fourth condition, applies to every Universal Credit claimant without that addition. For a payment based on recorded temperatures, you must not have been 'in employment or gainful self-employment on any day during that period'. For one based on a forecast, you must not be in employment or gainful self-employment 'on the day when the Met Office supplies the Department for Work and Pensions with the forecast'. Employment means 'employment under a contract of service, or in an office, including an elective office', and the definition sets no minimum hours or earnings, so on a plain reading even a few hours a week of paid work on a contract rules you out. Gainful self-employment has the same three-part meaning used for the minimum income floor: it is your main employment, your earnings are treated as self-employed earnings for Universal Credit, and the work is organised, developed, regular and carried on in expectation of profit. A small, occasional sideline may therefore not count. The regulation refers to 'the person', but gov.uk applies the test to both of you in a couple: it says you usually get the payment only if you are not employed or gainfully self-employed and your partner is not either. If your award includes the disabled child addition, none of this applies, and gov.uk confirms it does not matter whether you or your partner work.

Pension Credit is the simplest route. The child and disability conditions in regulation 1A(3) and the work rule do not apply to it, so gov.uk says you will usually get Cold Weather Payments if you get Pension Credit, with no child, disability or work test. Income-related Employment and Support Allowance qualifies if you are in the work-related activity group or the support group, or if you have a severe or enhanced disability premium, a pensioner premium or a child under 5 in your family. Gov.uk also lists a disabled child, but for ESA the regulations only recognise that through a child tax credit disability element, and child tax credit ended on 5 April 2025. Support for Mortgage Interest qualifies where you are treated as getting a qualifying benefit and one of the same premiums, a disabled child or a child under 5 applies, and gov.uk says you are usually treated as getting a qualifying benefit if you applied for it but your income was too high. The regulations still list Income Support and income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, with a child under 5 or one of the listed premiums, for anyone left on those benefits. The work rule in the previous section applies only to Universal Credit. If you are moving from ESA to Universal Credit, the conditions change with you: on Universal Credit you need the disabled child addition, a child under 5 or a limited capability for work decision, and unless you have the disabled child addition, the work rule starts to apply.

You do not apply. If you are eligible, DWP pays you automatically after a trigger at your station. There is one step that catches people out. If you get Universal Credit and you have a baby, or a child under 5 comes to live with you, you must report it as a change of circumstances in your online account, because gov.uk warns that you will not automatically get Cold Weather Payments if you do not. If you have no online account, call the Universal Credit helpline instead. To see whether your area has triggered, use DWP's Cold Weather Payment postcode checker, which asks whether you are checking a postcode in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland also has its own checker on nidirect. Gov.uk says you will be able to check whether your area is due a payment in November 2026, once the new season starts. A trigger in your area means payments are due to people there who meet the conditions above, not to everyone on Universal Credit. Last winter DWP also published weekly estimates of triggers and payments, with a spreadsheet linking each weather station to the postcode districts it covers, so you can see which station your postcode district uses.

Allow 14 working days from the end of the cold spell, because that is how long gov.uk says a payment should take. If it still has not arrived and the checker shows your area triggered, contact DWP. On Universal Credit, sign in to your account and add a note to your journal saying which cold period you think you should have been paid for. If you do not have an online account, ring the Universal Credit helpline, whose number is on your letters about your claim. For Pension Credit contact the Pension Service, and for ESA contact Jobcentre Plus. Before you do, check the conditions against your award. Has a baby or child under 5 been added to your claim? Has a limited capability for work decision been made? Were you or your partner working or gainfully self-employed during the cold week? Unless your award includes the disabled child addition, any of these can explain a missing payment. Tell DWP if you go into hospital too, because gov.uk says that could affect your payment. If a missing payment leaves you struggling to heat your home, ask your council about a Crisis Payment from the Crisis and Resilience Fund in England, or apply to the Discretionary Assistance Fund in Wales.

You cannot get a Cold Weather Payment if you live in Scotland. Since November 2022, regulation 1A(8) has required your home to be in England or Wales, and Social Security Scotland pays a Winter Heating Payment instead, under the Winter Heating Assistance (Low Income) (Scotland) Regulations 2023. It is a single payment of £62.00 this winter (last winter's was £59.75), and it is paid from December whatever the weather. You qualify by getting a qualifying benefit, and meeting its conditions, on any day in the qualifying week, which is the week running from the first Monday in November: 2 to 8 November 2026. The Universal Credit conditions mirror the Cold Weather Payment almost word for word. Your award includes the disabled child addition, or you are not in employment or gainful self-employment on any day in the qualifying week and your family includes a child under 5 or you are 'determined as having limited capability for work or limited capability for work and work-related activity'. Pension Credit qualifies with no extra condition. The payment is automatic and shows on your bank statement as WHP. If you think you missed it, call Social Security Scotland free on 0800 182 2222 (8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday) or send a request form. Pension-age households have a separate Pension Age Winter Heating Payment. The same Universal Credit groups make up Scotland's automatic core group for the Warm Home Discount.

Northern Ireland runs its own Cold Weather Payment scheme, which DWP describes as mirroring the one in England and Wales. According to nidirect, it reopens on 1 November 2026 and runs to 31 March 2027, pays £25 for each seven-day period when the average temperature is recorded as, or forecast to be, zero degrees Celsius or below, and should be paid within 14 working days into the account your benefit goes into. The Universal Credit rules on nidirect match Great Britain's in substance. You usually qualify if none of the adults on your claim are employed or self-employed and you either have limited capability for work or a child under five living with you, and you qualify whether or not you work if your claim includes a disabled child amount. Pension Credit, income-related ESA and Support for Mortgage Interest also qualify on similar terms. Northern Ireland has its own postcode checker on nidirect. If a payment does not arrive, add a note to your Universal Credit journal, or contact the Northern Ireland Pension Centre or your Jobs and Benefits office. Northern Ireland is not covered by the Warm Home Discount. For how Universal Credit itself differs there, see the Universal Credit in Northern Ireland guide.

No. Gov.uk says the payments do not affect your other benefits, and the Universal Credit rules back that up in two ways. A Cold Weather Payment is not income: Universal Credit counts earnings and the types of unearned income listed in regulation 66 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, and a social fund payment is not one of them. It is not counted as savings for a year either. Paragraph 16 of Schedule 10 to those Regulations disregards 'a payment made within the past 12 months under Part 8 of the Contributions and Benefits Act (the social fund)', and Cold Weather Payments are made from the social fund under section 138(2) of that Act. In Scotland, paragraph 24 of the same Schedule disregards winter heating assistance for 52 weeks, so a Winter Heating Payment is ignored in the same way. Cold Weather Payments also sit alongside the Warm Home Discount, which gov.uk says does not affect them. In England and Wales you qualify for the £150 discount if you got Universal Credit on 23 August 2026 and you or your partner were named on the bill of a participating supplier, even if the stricter Cold Weather Payment conditions rule you out, as our Warm Home Discount and Universal Credit guide explains.