Warm home discount

Nicholson1313

Not entitled to the warm home discount this year i have received it for the last 5 year due to caring for a vulnerable family member i cant work due to my commitments and carers staffing issues so i live on the lowest income and our gas and electric bills are through the roof and in debt due to keeping medical equipment running day and night.

What are people ment to do?

This is yet another blow for the vulnerable.

I save the government millions a year by caring for my family member and they just take, take, take untill theres nothing left and no where to turn! 🥺

Correct me if am wrong but wasnt the warm home discount created for societys most vulnerable? 

Spoonie_Turtle

In case you aren't aware of how it's changed, there's full information here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/warm-home-discount-eligibility-statement-england-and-wales/warm-home-discount-eligibility-statement-england-and-wales  And currently two threads on the front page of the forum with a summary of it.

Regarding 'what are you meant to do?', the only option really is to see if your supplier can help.  They all have funds to help those in the most hardship, but unfortunately not everyone.  You could also trawl through this website https://www.disability-grants.org/ to see if there's anything you could possibly apply for.

If you had any spare mental energy (driven by anger, most likely), maybe write to your MP and detail exactly how you're struggling and how missing out on this vital help has impacted you and your family.

While you're here, may I ask whether you/your family claim a qualifying benefit?  What type of property do you live in, and do you know its age and floor area?  The reason I ask is because if you are someone who should qualify but has slipped through the cracks, your MP ought to hear about that as well.

Nicholson1313

Hi thanks for your message 
How would i find out the age of my property and the floor area this would be good to check as its an x council house still rented through a housing association i have lived here 36 years we have also had the down stirs adapted for our vulnerable family member 

Spoonie_Turtle

Nicholson1313 said:

Hi thanks for your message 
How would i find out the age of my property and the floor area this would be good to check as its an x council house still rented through a housing association i have lived here 36 years we have also had the down stirs adapted for our vulnerable family member 

Ah, that's where an EPC comes in handy.  You can find out if there is one (even if it's expired) here https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate
And if there is one, fuller info on them here https://epc.opendatacommunities.org/

They are not always infallible so check what your neighbour's ones say too, as a kind of sanity check.

If you don't have an EPC, I'm afraid I don't know how you find out.  You could try asking your housing association, maybe.  [But then we've had people out from our HA telling us ours was built in one period and both architecturally and according to our EPC they were wrong, so again, not infallible method even if they can tell you.]  If those fail, another possible option for the age is to look back at old maps and see when it appears … but then with ours, it didn't appear on the OS map until ~30 years after it was built!  So if you have *some* idea already, at least of the rough era, that will help guide whether the information you find is likely to be reliable or not.
(Old maps until 1970s here https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore )