Official Statistics

Warm Home Discount statistics, 2022 to 2023 (HTML)

Published 27 July 2023

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Summary findings

• In 2022/2023 the Warm Home Discount (WHD) Scheme delivered Core Group rebates of £150 to 2.50 million households in Great Britain ^{[footnote 1]}. The total spend on Core Group rebates was £374 million. In comparison with the equivalent parts of the scheme in 2021/2022 this represents an estimated increase of around 400 thousand households receiving rebates and an increase of around £80 million of support
• Core Group 1 (known as Core Group in Scotland) provides rebates to households in receipt of the guaranteed element of Pension Credit. This was given to 945 thousand pensioner households across Great Britain in 2022/2023
• Core Group 2 provides rebates to low income households living in homes likely to have high energy costs. This was given to 1.55 million households across England and Wales in 2022/2023
• the majority of households (2.37 million, 95%) received an automatic rebate based on data matching with a further 128 thousand receiving rebates after contacting the WHD Helpline
• the highest regional rates of WHD were in Wales (12.6%) and northern regions of England (North East 12.4%, North West 11.6%) and the lowest was South East with 6.1%.

Warm Home Discount rebates issued by nation and core group 2022/2023

What you need to know about these statistics

Warm Home Discount is a government scheme which places an obligation on larger energy suppliers to support low income vulnerable households with their energy costs in the form of direct rebates on their electricity bills. The England and Wales scheme was reformed in 2022/2023 to extend and better target the rebate to those with the highest estimated energy costs. These households each received a rebate of £150.

These are Experimental Statistics which will be undergoing an evaluation process prior to being published as official statistics. We welcome user feedback on this first release of WHD statistics following the reform of the scheme and will work with data providers to improve the timeliness of this release.

1. Introduction

The Warm Home Discount was introduced in 2011 with the scheme administered by energy suppliers and regulated by Ofgem. Reports on the number of households receiving the rebate in previous years were published by Ofgem. A summary of the number of rebates provided and value of those rebates is reported in table 17.

In 2021/2022, 2.32 million households in Great Britain received a rebate of £140. Of these 969,000 households were in the Core Group (equivalent to the new Core Group 1 and Core Group Scotland) and 1.35 million households were within the Broader Group of vulnerable households of which around 200 thousand households were in Scotland. Together these households received £325 million with a further £35 million spent across 40 Industry Initiatives to support vulnerable households.

The changes made to the England and Wales scheme in 2022/2023 now determine the recipients of the scheme primarily using administrative data. These changes have enabled the production of these statistics that provide more detail on the households receiving the rebate. Households are identified primarily based on data held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on those receiving certain means-tested benefits or tax credits. Where applicable (for Core Group 2 outlined below), this data is then matched with energy costs derived from Valuation Office Agency (VOA) Council Tax Valuation Lists to identify households likely to have the highest energy costs. Additional data is obtained via the WHD helpline where households who consider that they meet the eligibility criteria can seek to obtain the rebate. Table 17 shows the number of households receiving the rebate by method obtained since 2011/2012.

This release presents statistics on the following WHD eligibility groups:

Core Group 1 supports pensioners on a low income who are receiving the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit. This applies to households in Great Britain and is equivalent to the Core Group of earlier phases of the scheme. It is known as Core Group in Scotland.

Core Group 2 supports working age low income households receiving eligible benefits AND assessed a living in a home with high energy costs. The high costs element is determined based on the VOA data held for the address of the household based on the type, age, size of dwelling. The specific criteria used to model this are updated on an ongoing basis by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. This aspect of the scheme only applies in England and Wales and replaces the Broader Group of the previous phase of the scheme.

Accompanying tables

Tables showing the number of households receiving WHD are available. The tables show the delivery of WHD at local area level, by dwelling type and household composition together with the share of households receiving a rebate via the helpline and comparison with some historic data from earlier scheme years.

2. WHD delivery rates by area

There was a high level of variation in the rates of WHD between regions. The lowest rates of WHD, are in Scotland where eligibility is restricted to the Core Group and therefore these statistics only represent this part of the scheme in Scotland.

The highest regional rates of WHD were in Wales (12.6%) and northern regions of England (North East 12.4%, North West 11.6%, Yorkshire and the Humber (10.5%) and West Midlands (10.4%). The lowest rates of WHD, outside Scotland, were South East (6.1%), East of England (6.8%) and South West (7.1%).

The level of regional variability is affected by the share of eligible households and is a consistent pattern with the fuel poverty statistics with higher rates of fuel poverty in northern regions due to lower incomes. See the Fuel poverty statistics for England.

Overall in England and Wales, 9.1% of households received WHD. There were 28 local authorities where at least 14% of households received WHD. Of these 6 were in Wales and 10 in North West England.

Map 1: Proportion of households receiving Warm Home Discount in Core Groups, by Local Authority, 2022/23 ^{[footnote 2]}

The share of households receiving WHD in urban areas was 9.5%, higher than semi-rural areas at 8.0% and rural areas at 6.2%. While homes in rural areas are more likely to have higher energy costs, they are less likely to qualify for eligible benefits. Analysis for data in Scotland has been excluded from this section since a different classification of rurality is used in Scotland and only part of the scheme covers Scotland.

Figure 1: Percentage of households receiving Warm Home Discount, by Rurality, 2022/2023 (England and Wales)

3. WHD delivery rates by dwelling types

In this section data for Scotland has been excluded since the data classification used is based on data from the Valuation Office Agency for England and Wales. This is consistent with the data linking used to identify eligibility of households in Core Group 2 with high energy costs. While these comparisons cover WHD delivered in both core groups, the patterns they show are driven by Core Group 2 where larger and less efficient homes are more likely to meet the high costs eligibility.

Figure 2 shows the share of households receiving WHD by dwelling type. This is a mixed pattern with lower rates for detached homes reflecting their lower likelihood of receiving eligible benefits and lower rates for flats reflecting their lower likelihood of meeting the high costs eligibility of Core Group 2.

Figure 2: Percentage of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by dwelling type (England and Wales)

Figure 3 shows the share of households by dwelling age receiving WHD. This shows a clear trend with households living in older properties more likely to receive the rebate. This is driven by the trend within Core Group 2 with strong correlation between high energy costs and older properties. The highest rate of WHD was 13.4% (pre-1919) compared with 3.0% for post 1993.

Figure 3: Percentage of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by dwelling age (England and Wales)

Figure 4 shows the share of households by floor area receiving WHD. The variation will be driven by competing drivers with households meeting the Core Group 2 high costs eligibility criteria more likely to be larger but also noting that households on lower incomes and receiving qualifying benefits are less likely to live in larger homes.

Figure 4: Percentage of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by floor area (England and Wales)

Figure 5 shows the share of households receiving WHD by tenure. The highest rate of WHD was in social housing (14.8%) compared with private rented (7.5%) and owner occupied (6.6%). Overall social housing accounted for at least 30% of all rebates.

Figure 5: Percentage of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by tenure (Great Britain)

4. WHD recipients by household characteristics

The following analysis shows the type of households receiving WHD based on their benefits received, benefit unit and age of the lead beneficiary.

Figure 6 shows the principal benefit a household receives by which its eligibility for the scheme is determined. Where a household is in receipt of the guaranteed element of pension credit and hence eligible under Core Group 1 this will be the principal benefit. This is followed by Universal Credit then Income-based Employment and Support Allowance and other benefits as per their order in the chart below. Overall, 38% of households receiving WHD were eligible through Core Group 1. A further 33% of households received Universal Credit. The principal benefit was Income-based Employment Support Allowance received by 12% of households and Child or Working Tax credits for 11% of households.

Figure 6: Share of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by benefit eligibility (Great Britain)

When considering all households in receipt of disability premiums, 715 thousand (29%) received some form of disability premium. Of these 390 thousand (55%) were in Core Group 1 and 324 thousand (45%) in Core Group 2.

Eligibility for means tested benefits is determined based on a benefit unit (defined as a single adult or a married/cohabiting couple and any dependent children). Where the benefit unit includes a couple the age could be either partner.

Overall 1.07 million households (43%) had a beneficiary aged 66+, of which 945 thousand (88%) are eligible through Core Group 1. A further 661 thousand households (26%) had a beneficiary aged 46-65 and 679 thousand households (27%) aged 26-45. Just 80 thousand households (3%) were aged 25 or under.

The variability by age reflects both the number of households receiving eligible benefits together with the type of housing these households live in.

Figure 7: Number of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by age of lead beneficiary (Great Britain)

Of the 2.50 million households receiving WHD, 770 thousand (31%) were households with dependent child(ren). While this is around one-third of total WHD households they do represent around half of all households under Core Group 2.

Figure 8: Number of households receiving Warm Home Discount rebates in 2022/2023 by type of benefit unit (Great Britain)

5. Methodology

The Warm Home Discount statistics have been published as a new Experimental Statistic following reform of the England and Wales scheme for 2022/2023 alongside a methodology handbook.

Annex: Further information

Related data

The overall reports on delivery of the Warm Home Discount Scheme are published by Ofgem. These reports show the number of rebates delivered in previous scheme years and will report the overall delivery of the 2022/2023 scheme year later in the year.

Experimental Statistics

These statistics have been designated as Experimental Statistics. This designation reflects the newness of administrative data systems leading to some areas of incomplete data and some minor issues managing duplicate records between the matched and helpline datasets. The construction of some of these tables involved data linking with other data sources. As the new administrative data systems are improved, it is hoped that the statistics are less reliant on data linking. Following the work done to process data through the helpline, the master datasets used for future editions of the matched process should also have higher data accuracy. Data quality along with user feedback on the content and presentation of these statistics will inform the department’s judgement on when to classify these as official statistics.

Revisions policy

The Department’s statistical revisions policy sets out the revisions policy for these statistics, which has been developed in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics.

User engagement

Users are encouraged to provide comments and feedback on how these statistics are used and how well they meet user needs. Comments on any issues relating to this statistical release are welcomed and should be sent to: fuelpoverty@energysecurity.gov.uk

The Department’s statement on statistical public engagement and data standards sets out the department’s commitments on public engagement and data standards as outlined by the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Pre-release access to statistics

Some ministers and officials receive access to these Official Statistics up to 24 hours before release. Details of the arrangements for doing this and a list of the ministers and officials that receive pre-release access to these statistics can be found in the Department’s statement of compliance with the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008.

Contact

Responsible statistician: Stephen Oxley
Email: fuelpoverty@energysecurity.gov.uk
Media enquiries: 020 7215 1000
Public enquiries: 07471358388

1. Broader Group Scotland rebates and spend are not included in the statistics and are additional to these figures. The scheme does not cover Northern Ireland. ↩

2. Figures for Scotland only cover households receiving WHD through Core Group. These figures therefore only represent part of the WHD scheme in Scotland. ↩