Universal Credit: Welsh families to get £100 winter fuel payment

Welsh households on universal credit and other working-age benefits will be offered a £100 one-off payment this winter to help with fuel bills.

The Welsh government said it expects 350,000 households to benefit from the £38m winter fuel support scheme.

It comes as Labour ministers accuse UK Tory counterparts of failing to help families after scrapping the £20 pandemic uplift to universal credit.

But Conservatives said they are giving Wales record funding.

Meanwhile a Senedd committee suggested a debt "bonfire" could help people who are in arrears with council tax bills.

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The Welsh government said the winter fuel payment is part of a £51m package of support to help families.

Of that, £1.1m will be provided "to support and bolster foodbanks, community food partnerships and community hubs", but the Welsh government has not announced how the remaining £11.9m would be spent, promising further announcements in coming weeks.

The scheme will be open to households where at least one person is on a working-age means tested benefit, and is responsible for paying the property's energy bills.

Claimants must have been claiming any one of the following benefits between 1 December 2021 and 31 January 2022:

• Income support
• Income-based job seekers allowance
• Employment and support allowance
• Universal credit
• Working tax credits

Councils will be writing to people in receipt of these benefits, but individuals can also submit a claim via their local authority, according to a Welsh government spokesman.

The spokesman said the cash will be paid straight into bank accounts and will not affect other benefits or be subject to tax - saying officials have worked with the HMRC and DWP.

People will not be obligated to spend it on energy - although the Welsh government hopes that is how it will be spent.

It is not confirmed when the payments will be made, but it is understood to be planned for around mid-December.

High world gas prices have helped push up the cost of energy, causing many small providers to go out of business.

The Welsh scheme is separate to cold weather payments, which are paid by the UK government.

The Welsh government said it is concerned families could be turning to high-cost lenders or loan sharks to make ends meet.

Rebecca Evans, Welsh Minster for Finance and Local Government, said: "Families across Wales are facing a real cost-of-living crisis thanks to rising prices and cuts to key benefit payments.

"To help tackle these unprecedented challenges, we are making £51m available to develop our own bespoke Household Support Fund to help with some of the costs families are facing.

"Where Westminster has failed to support families, the Welsh government will step in and back our communities through this challenging period."

Welsh Conservative finance spokesman Peter Fox said: "Labour have been in power for the past 22 years and sadly it's left Wales with the lowest take home pay in Britain, and the most people living in poverty in the UK.

"The Conservative government is helping families meet the cost of living and supporting vulnerable households by reducing the universal credit taper rate from 63p to 55p, as well as raising the national living wage to £9.50."

He added planned "record" extra funding from the Welsh government - which the UK government says amounts to £2.5bn per year - "delivers on the priorities of the people in Wales and is the backdrop to such announcements by Labour ministers".

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Plaid Cymru's spokesperson for social justice and equalities, Sioned Williams, said: "This financial top up from Welsh government will be a welcome, if only temporary respite from the ravages of Tory austerity and rising cost of living.

"In acknowledging the role of community food partnerships and food banks, it seems incredible that Welsh government doesn't also expand the free school meal offering, to include all children from families in receipt of universal credit."

Total outstanding council tax arrears reached £156.6m last year - the steepest increase for 20 years.

In Wales, people can no longer be sent to prison for not paying council tax.

But the Senedd Equalities and Social Justice Committee says there were still some "pockets of bad practice" in the way councils recovered debts.

It called on the Welsh government to look into the possibility of a public sector "debt bonfire" and to report back by next June.

That could mean councils writing off debts and the Welsh government reimbursing them.

The recommendations come in a report about the impact of the pandemic on debt, which heard bailiffs have used "aggressive and humiliating" behaviour during lockdown.

Housing charity Shelter said it had heard of bailiffs "making people FaceTime them so they can take them around the house and show them what they're going to take".

Finance Minister Rebecca Evans was asked at a press conference whether ministers might get rid of a property-based council tax, given many debt problems were linked to the bills.

She said they were looking at "quite radical options" for reform.

These included a "revaluation with more bands at different ends of the system", a land value tax, or "seeking what more we can do with this system we have at the moment", Ms Evans said.

A local income tax was also suggested, but she said some of the options "will not be viable".

No decision had been made on the way forward, she said. "We're looking forward to saying more hopefully before Christmas" after discussions with councils and others, the finance and local government minister added.

The UK government said it supported families in need with billions of pounds of additional welfare support through the pandemic and continued to do so.

"Work is the best route out of poverty and the changes we have made to the universal credit taper rate will see nearly two million working claimants better off by around £1,000 a year," a spokesman said.

He said the most vulnerable could get additional benefits and help through a new £500m fund.

The announcement is interesting given the Cardiff-based government does not run a full-blown benefits service.

Where the Welsh government has handed out pots of cash of support in the past, it is unusual for Welsh ministers to offer payments to households where everyone in a group is given money to spend as they like.

It is a small amount of cash and major welfare schemes in Wales - like universal credit and its predecessors - remain the responsibility of the UK government in Westminster.

But the announcement is perhaps indicative of a Welsh Labour government more willing to make small moves into devolved welfare help, as the recent announcement of a possible universal basic income pilot has shown.

While it might be constitutionally novel, the payments themselves have not attracted direct criticism from the opposition parties in the Welsh Parliament.

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