Winter fuel payments: ‘Mean’, ‘politically motivated’ and ‘just plain wrong’ say councillors

During a meeting of the full council on Wednesday (September 25) they voted for leader Robert Eggleston to write to Chancellor Rachel Reeves urging a review of the decision and to protect vulnerable pensioners from fuel poverty.

The vote followed a motion tabled by Jim Knight (Con, Cuckfield, Bolney & Ansty) which echoed national concerns that the payments would only go to pensioners receiving means-tested benefits such as Pension Credit.

The motion said: “While some pensioners within Mid Sussex currently in receipt of the Winter Fuel Payment may not require it, many thousands across our district sit just above the cut-off for Pension Credit and will now lose this valuable allowance.”

It was also agreed that the council should lead a local awareness campaign to alert people that they may be able to claim Pension Credit – something that hundreds of thousands of eligible pensioners across the country have not been doing.

One of the concerns raised by councillors was the decision not to include pensioners on housing benefit among those eligible for the Winter Fuel Payments.

And others told tales of people who had missed out on Pension Credit by a whisker but still desperately needed help with their heating bills.

Simon Hicks (Lib Dem, Burgess Hill Leylands) shared one such story.

He added that the council was speaking to pensioners in 262 households on housing benefit and the like, who it believed were also entitled to Pension Credit and, hence, the Winter Fuel Payment.

Mr Hicks added: “Making the allowance effectively means-tested is ham-fisted in its implementation and just plain wrong.

“It will impact on the majority of pensioners, including most of the 30,000 that live in Mid Sussex.”

But Paul Kenny (Lab, Haywards Heath Franklands) spoke about a £20bn ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances, adding: “Do we really think that, at a time when our finances have been left in such a dishevelled and perilous state, it makes sense to pay out these funds on a regular basis to pensioners who absolutely don’t need it.”

Mr Kenny said the government would ‘look at the anomolies’ in the Winter Fuel Payment system, and ‘attempt to fix them’.