Cold Weather Payments: West Midlands
(asked on 13th April 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cold weather payments have been issued to people in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry and (c) the West Midlands in each of the last five years.
The Cold Weather Payment scheme is administered at weather station level rather than at a constituency or regional level. The coverage area for each weather station is determined by the Met Office, which assesses the most appropriate weather station for each postcode area. Cold weather payments are triggered when the average temperature recorded at the weather station has been recorded as, or is forecast to be, 0oC or below over seven consecutive days, during the Cold Weather season (November to March).
There are three constituencies in Coventry: Coventry North-East, Coventry South and Coventry North-West. Postcodes within these constituencies are linked to the weather station Coleshill. Table 1 shows the weather station linked to Coventry postcodes, and also includes postcodes in constituencies other than those in Coventry.
Table 1 Postcode sectors mapped to Weather Stations | |
Weather station | Postcode Sectors Covered |
Coleshill | B1-21, B23-38, B40, B42-50, B60-80, B90-98, CV1-12, CV21-23, CV31-35, CV37, CV47, DY1-14, LE10, WS1-15, WV1-16. |
Table 2 Estimated number of Cold Weather recipients linked to the Colsehill weather station | ||
Year | Estimated number of recipients | Number of triggers |
2020/21 | 262,000 | 1 |
2019/20 | 264,000 | 0 |
2018/19 | 279,000 | 0 |
2017/18 | 289,000 | 1 |
2016/17 | 299,595 | 0 |
Qualifying individuals living in this area will have received a £25 payment in respect of a seven-day period of Cold Weather. Expenditure can be estimated by multiplying the number of payments by £25.
Table 2 shows the estimated number of cold weather payment recipients, and the number of cold weather triggers in the period of 1 November to 31 March, for each of the last five years.
c) There are 59 constituencies in the West Midlands area. Summarising cold weather payment estimates per constituency is completed manually, and we are unable to provide a breakdown for this area as this is a labour intensive process.