When will Alternative Fuel Payment be paid?

Unfortunately you will have to keep an eye out on this government page for the government manual form. 

https://www.gov.uk/get-help-energy-bills/alternative-fuels

No sign of any payment for us either.  We are in an area that does have gas, but our rental house doesn’t and we have oil.  No help on government website either

Hey @Lynds40,

Sorry to hear this,

As soon as the GOV website updates with a form or helpline for customers to apply for the AFP I’ll update this thread. 

Hope this helps. 

Form launched

https://www.gov.uk/apply-alternative-fuel-bill-support-if-not-automatic

thank you, have now applied.  You have to prove you have bought oil since September 2022 though!

I’m not on mains gas and use oil for heating and LPG for cooking but no sign of the £200 payment in my account. I contacted OVO via chat to find out when I could expect payment and they couldn’t give a date and said I may need to apply via the government portal. I guess from the other posts that if the payment hasn’t been made yet that’s the only way to get it. 
Could never understand how this was going to work. 

If you haven’t been advised you’ll get it and need to apply the form is here https://www.gov.uk/apply-alternative-fuel-bill-support-if-not-automatic

Aaargh! I was checking out on the forum if anyone else has been paid the £200 because I've not heard anything from anyone yet. Now I read that you must have bought fuel since September, but I filled my lpg tank in the summer. It's just ready for a refill but does anyone know if I am too late for the support payment if it's delivered and invoiced in March? I thought I was being careful, I'm worried now I might miss out just when I need it! 

I would recommend calling and asking

The number the government has published is

Telephone: 0808 175 3943
Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm

You could also try this email address although i would recommend trying the phone call first. 

alternativefunding@ebss.beis.gov.uk

Thanks for your prompt reply, I've spoken to a helpful person who reassures me that they should accept bulk purchase invoices for deliveries made before September. If the application is rejected and I have a more recent invoice by then I could reapply before May. 

I've now applied online; it appears that the payment will be made by the local council rather than electricity supplier, in up to 6 weeks. Let's hope it goes smoothly!

Fingers crossed it goes smoothly, keep us updated as it will help other people. 

@GillO I’m so glad to hear this. I stocked up at the end of August to be sure of having fuel for a cold September, so I was quite prepared to have to contest any unfavourable decision. I suppose it’s not unlikely that I’ll have to argue anyway, but at least I can hope. Thanks for sharing!

Ovo customer and live on a road that does not have gas supplied. Oil boiler. Ovo has not passed me £200. So tonight tried using the online gov form. I note it says on opening page "If you think you should have got a payment but have not, contact your electricity supplier". I still trued anyway after reading above replies. However. No matter what I do it constantly just says bank details do not match but very close. Considering I have had the same bank account for over 20 years, lived here for almost 10 years and pay my council tax using that bank account I find it confusing to say the least. Guess it will be a call in the morning before the gov tell me I am too late!

Likely the name on the account doesn't quite match. 

Perhaps compare with what is on your bank card and bank statements. 

Probably needs to be exact match

@GillO @Jeffus @Emmanuelle_OVO Just to confirm that six weeks (and a couple of days) after submitting an application on the Apply for alternative fuel bill support if you do not get it automatically page at gov.uk, £200 dropped into my bank account.

I was worried that my application had been rejected because I stocked up in August 2022, but the application form only asked for proof of purchases after 1 September 2022. So, for anyone in the same situation - don’t worry, the staff at the BEIS EBSS office are clearly human. I had an immediate response to my enquiry sent to alternativefunding@ebss.beis.gov.uk, so that’s where to send any concerns you may have. My local council denied all knowledge, saying that they just pass on whatever the government sends them. 

The £200 has already been spent on sustainably-sourced logs for my wood-burning stove.

I'm also happy to report receipt today of £200 alternative fuel payment via the local council directly into my bank account. The June invoice which I submitted with the online application was accepted without a problem. It has been pretty much the expected 6 weeks, and is very welcome to contribute towards the eye watering  invoice to refill the tank to last another year. 

Good to hear customers are getting the payment 

Sure is.

A little postscript to this episode: a week after I received this payment, I had an email from the BEIS AFP team people reading:

Your application for the Alternative Fuels Payment has been successful.
A one-off payment of £200 will be made to your bank account using the details you provided. This payment will come from your local council.
It may take up to 5 days for you to receive the payment.

I’m not complaining 😊

Hello, new to this forum and would like to see if any forum members have a similar problem, and have had success in solving the problem as follows, we live off grid as there are no utilities connections near or affordable enough to connect to our property, so we generate our own electric supply ,water supply and heating with no connection to any utilities what so ever apart from a BT telephone connection, our diesel oil ,heating fuel etc has soared in price and we are like any household in the uk finding it hard to cope at the moment, so we applied 6 months ago for the government £400 off grid payment and the £200 alt fuel payment and were denied the payments , the reason was that we had already received these payments through OVO as we have a electric connection and meter supply with OVO, obviously we don.t as we live entirely without any utility connections to this house, we have now emailed and phoned the Dept of Energy over and over again, anyone we have contacted there doesn’t even have the correct knowledge of  what or who is entitled too these scheme payments or what being off grid actually is, they have been asked over and over to supply proof of the evidence we have this non existing electric connection and OVO meter but they will not provide this evidence as it would be impossible to do so.

 Any useful tips would be much appreciated .

Who is registered as your electricity supplier when you look?

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/finding-your-energy-supplier-or-network-operator

I appreciate this is not a positive comment, but I suspect now the schemes have formally closed there is no way of claiming. 

checked and SSE/OVO is the supplier for north Scotland, yes you right the scheme looks to have closed ,the Department of energy have been misleading throughout the claim process, say they have a supply/meter with our name and address that has already received energy bills support payments automatically, yesterday  however now reading through this forum I found that OVO say they simply go off your postcode to get a meter number, not your name and property address and several properties have the same postcode here, so looks like in 6 months of me complaining the dept of Energy hasn’t even had the common sense to check the actual name/address of who received the payments in our postcode area, now I know OVO  is the local electric supplier I will contact them now to verify we have no grid connection. Thanks Jeffus

When you have gathered as much information as possible, it might be worth writing to your local MP and asking them to enquire with the government departments on your behalf. MP requests tend to get a personalised response rather than a generic reply that you are likely to receive.

At least that way you may get closure either way.

Make sure you are not getting confused. 

SSE is still a network operator and is nothing to do with OVO.

SSE run some of the infrastructure in Scotland 

https://www.sse.com/what-we-do/ssen-distribution/

OVO bought the consumer retail business from SSE across the whole of the UK. 

The network operators are different from the retail suppliers. 

There are two steps in the link I provided. The first step identifies your network operator in your area of the country, the second step your retail supplier if you have one (you shouldn't have one by the sound of things).