The Department of Works and Pension's (DWP) Cold Weather Payment scheme comes to an end today (March 31) following a chilly winter that saw hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people handed extra cash.
Between the start of November and the end of March, hundreds of postcodes across the country received one-off payments of £25 for every seven-day period in which temperatures were either recorded as, or predicted to be, below 0C.
This gave vulnerable households some additional funds to heat their homes during especially cold periods. In order to have received the payments, recipients must live in England or Wales and claim certain benefits such as Pension Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or Universal Credit. Read more: DWP issues update on 'crucial' change to pensions from August Overall, nearly 1.2 million payments were sent out to eligible recipients in England and Wales.
The maximum number of payments sent out in one area was three - for a total of £75 - to households in certain parts of Cumbria that saw temperatures plummet on three separate occasions over the winter.
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