Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in Meriden and Solihull East constituency will be impacted by planned changes to winter fuel payments.

Please note that following boundary changes to Parliamentary Constituencies, data on Meriden and Solihull East constituency is not explicitly available/ published. To obtain the above figure, data on the previous Solihull constituency and previous Meriden constituency have been combined. Therefore, the above figure of 39,091 is likely to be an overestimate as the new Meriden and Solihull East constituency consists of some of the areas of the previous Meriden constituency and the previous Solihull constituency, not all.

It is estimated that around 39,091 people in the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency will be affected by the change in policy. This is based on Feb-24 Pension Credit statistics and 22-23 Winter Fuel Payments statistics (sources below).

This estimation is calculated by subtracting the number of Pension Credit recipients the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency from the number of Winter Fuel Payment recipients in the previous Meriden and Solihull East constituency. This is essentially the number of Winter Fuel Payment claimants pre-policy change not claiming Pension Credit, as an estimate of those who will no longer receive Winter fuel payment. The Pension Credit data that is used is based on the 2010 Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, not 2024, in order to be comparable with the Winter Fuel Payments statistics.

Also, the above figures do not take into account any potential increase in Pension Credit take-up we might see as a result of the policy change (means testing Winter fuel payments to those on Pension Credit and other means tested benefits). We do not have data on those additional Pension Credit claims by Parliamentary constituencies or local authorities.

The published Pension Credit figures refer to households rather than individuals, so the number of individuals claiming Pension Credit, will be higher. This means that the number of pensioners eligible for Winter Fuel Payment will be higher and that the estimates provided above overstate the number of pensioners not eligible for Winter Fuel Payment following changes in eligibility.

In addition to that, Pension Credit claimants are the majority of those that will be eligible for Winter Fuel Payments, not all. There are other pensioners who are eligible for Winter Fuel Payments (as they claim other means tested benefits) but they are not considered in these figures as it is not possible to do so.

Source:

The Winter Fuel Payments statistics are published here:

Winter Fuel Payment statistics for winter 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Pension Credit data is published here: Pension Credit – Data from May 2018