When is the Warm Home Discount (WHD) available?

Good to hear @FREEFLOW 

If you post when you get the actual payment, it may help other customers on the forum 

I’m sad that whilst I was with SSE I received the WHD every year but since moving to OVO last year I did not receive the WHD..

I don’t feel I will get it this year either..I don’t have an understanding why as i qualify in the broader group England being registered disabled with I.R ESA and war pension etc

I have tried to find out why and all I could determine using gov.uk etc was that my medical need social housed bungalow does not have a valid energy certificate??..Don’t know what I can do to receive this years WHD.

That was probably a coincidence. The rules changed last year, so many who had received WHD previously were no longer eligible, while (happily) some who hadn’t received it before found that they had now become eligible. It’s a bit of a lottery.

This reflects the eligibility criterion requiring people not in WHD Core Group 1 to have ‘high energy costs’ to be included in Core Group 2. From tomorrow 16 October, you should be able to find out whether you’re eligible at the WHD webpage.

An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is supposed to indicate what it might cost to heat the property, taking into account factors like its size, insulation and heating method. It also indicates what improvements might be made to make it perform better energy-wise. It’s a rudimentary tool, only taken seriously by civil servants who need to be able to put people into boxes. If there is no EPC, there are probably rules that work out whether the property’s energy costs are high or low; it sounds as if yours were deemed low enough for you not to be included in Core Group 2.

OVO should learn in the next few weeks which of their customers are eligible for WHD; I’m hoping that they’ll post a notice here in the forum when they’ve received the list of winners from DWP, so that when that happens, Customer Support should be able to tell you whether you’re on the list or not. 

If you’re not, your best bet might be to ask Citizens Advice to help you appeal. It might be worthwhile contacting them anyway if the GOV.UK page tells you you’re not eligible.