When does the Warm Home Discount get paid to me?

Hi ​@Mike Hansen ,

OVO can only issue it to you AFTER the DWP sends you the WHD Eligibility Letter, which are being done in waves. Until then, OVO won’t know you qualify.

Please wait for the DWP letter and follow the instructions - OVO can’t help you until then.

Actually I got the WHD credited to my OVO account a week before I got the letter from the DWP.

There again they were probably both issued on the same day and it just took a week for the post.

I got it credited already, but haven’t received a letter yet. My guess, it will arrive on this week. 

Hey ​@Mike Hansen,

Keep an eye on your account! You might see the funds show up before the letter arrives. As Costeek and Nukecad mentioned, I really hope it comes through for you soon. It’s a great help, especially during this time of year!​

I received the letter - took approx seven days to arrive. 

My letter arrived on 5 November, but I had to jump through the ‘call us’ hoop to persuade them that I qualified*. I think the payment authorization was issued immediately. The discount dropped into my account today.

My next steps:

1. Reduce my DD to the £12 recommended.
2. Apply for a refund of £120. This would leave a balance of more than 3 x £12, so the automaton should approve it.
3. Once confirmation of the refund turns up, revert the DD to what it was before, to pre-empt any move by the DD gestapo.

The £30 left behind serves to boost the balance at 31 March next to the now-required one month’s costs. Do we think this will work?
  

*   I’m not absolutely sure of the reason for this (I had to do it last year as well), but the nice young lady let slip that the name my DWP letter was addressed to isn’t identical to that on my OVO account. I wonder how many others are caught in the same trap.

I’ve has similar at other places, if I try to uses ‘Steve’ then I’m not recognised because the account says ‘Steven’.

Personally I’m still juggling my DDs to give a zero or very slight credit balance at the end of March, then I’ll build up a months credit over 12 months starting from April.

That’s pretty indefensible. In my case, it’s the difference between first name, First name and Christian Name. Forms ask for one or the other of these, which aren’t necessarily the same. Modern systems will have become intelligent at some stage, so that ‘Steve’ and ‘Steven’ should be treated as the same, other things being equal. It may have become problematic in the last half-century or so, when it became commonplace for nicknames of the ‘Steve’ variety to be given to infants as proper names - Gary (< Gareth), Zak (< Zacharias), Jack (< John) or, infamously, Harrison and Lilibet (<<  Henry and < Elizabeth respectively). Computers can’t possibly tell whether a name submitted is ‘proper’ or a sobriquet.

I realize as I’m typing this that it’s more complicated than so ...

But if you make that change, then you have the Scunthorpe Problem…

Unfortunately, it’s easier to just enforce exact match than it is to try and do fuzzy matches. Unless it’s for car number plates where fuzzy matches can actually be possible...

Yes, it gets complicated, with possible security implications these days.

So probably best (and easiest) if they just stick with insisting on a precise match.

That died down years ago. I was born in Scunthorpe, so I was plagued by this problem all through the nineties and beyond. Nobody cares these days.

Well, it seems that it did. As far as I can tell, the system didn’t mind my changing the DD amount twice in a day, but I couldn’t wait any longer because otherwise there’d be less than a week to DD Day and I wasn’t sure whether changing at that stage would work. Now I just wait for the refund to land.

Meanwhile, I sit and ponder over why this exercise should be necessary. We’re back at the status quo, except that my bank balance is a bit healthier (assuming all goes well). Basing the online refund limit on the size of the DD is perhaps easier than anything else, but it can be illogical - as I think I demonstrated.

TBH, I don’t expect that many will have a recommended DD of just £12, but I may be wrong.

But yes we are having to jump through hoops just to be paying what we should be paying and no more.
I feel sorry for those who’s maths skills may not be up to the job of working it out.

I worked out last month that my £150 Warm Home Discount credit would be swallowed up by OVO getting my account to a month in credit by the end of March - if I let that happen.

The WHD is for my benefit, not to inflate my account credit and thus OVO’s bank balance. and I will be taking fairly unusual steps to make sure thatthe WHD comes to my benefit (whilst still having a credit balance on March 31st).

It seems that unusual steps are what we need to take now just to keep ourselves in a reasonable balance.

I received  a letter in October  saying  I automatically  qualify  for the £150 WHD I have still  not received  the WHD I'm on pre payment  meters and was told I would  receive  a voucher to cash at the post office 

Morning ​@deluce53, I hope you’re well.

I’ve sent you a private message - have a read and get back to me when you can.

Cheers!

Mines was paid last year in November - but just noticed it hasn’t yet shown in my account this year. Just checking the forum before I contact OVO about it. 😊

Hi ​@LizzyFrostie 

Did you get a DWP Letter about the WHD yet?

No - I’m in the ‘broader group’ in Scotland, which means I had to apply for the WHD. I never normally get a dwp letter. The money is usually just paid into my OVO a/c. I did get an email a few months ago saying my application was successful. 🙂

Hi guys!

How long this discount will be available? Is this ongoing?

To be eligible for the Warm Home Discount, you have to be in receipt of certain benefits: the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit; means tested benefits such as

• Housing Benefit
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Income Support
• the ‘Savings Credit’ part of Pension Credit
• Universal Credit

If you are eligible, you will receive a letter from the DWP telling you this. These letters may be sent out any time between late October 2025 and early January 2026. Sometimes you may be asked to give more information before you are confirmed as being eligible. 

The DWP then instructs your energy company to pay you the £150. This may be done by putting a credit on your energy account, adding it as a credit to your PAYG smart meter or by sending out a voucher through the post that you take to wherever you usually top up your meter key/card and the £150 will then be added as a credit. The Warm Home Discount is paid for out of the Standing Charges that we all pay.

If you think you are eligible and you do not get a letter by early January 2026, you have to contact the Warm Home Discount Scheme by phone or letter by the end of February 2026.  

The arrangements for Scotland are different and there is no Warm Home Discount for Northern Ireland. 

Thanks ​@Bendog for a clear overview of the system 🙏
    

There may be a tiny little semantics question here, the sort cherished by old pedants … I explained higher up how I was subjected to the third degree by the WHD gestapo in Falkirk. With WHD (in England and Wales, at any rate), eligibility is a bit like being pregnant: either you are or you aren’t. However, as I discovered, you may be eligible for the discount but fail to qualify to receive it. The Falkirk interrogation aims to distinguish between those eligible candidates who qualify and those who don’t. In my case it was a simple but easily explained difference in the name associated with my National Insurance number and the one associated with my OVO account number. 

The sentence I quoted above refers to this process of establishing whether an eligible candidate is qualified to receive the discount or not.  

Happy Sunday!

Thanks for confirming.

If you don’t get it by mid-January, let OVO know and they’ll take a look.

Hey ​@LizzyFrostie 

I’m glad to see Blastoise186 has already stopped by with some really helpful advice. 

If you’ve got any other questions or queries, do let us know.😊

I received  a government  letter in October  to say I automatically  qualify for the £150 warm home discount,  at the beginning  of October  I phoned ovo as I still had not received  the warm home discount,  I was told that as I'm on pre payment  meters a voucher would be printed and sent to me. I have still  not received  any voucher or any other payment  from ovo for the warm home discount  yet  the government  informed  myself  in October  I would receive  this payment it's now over 2 mths  since receiving  this letter but no payment,  when I have spoken to other people  who use other utility  companies  they received  there payments  weeks ago  what is going  on.