What the Cost of Living Payments were
Between 2022 and 2024, DWP and HMRC paid a series of one-off, tax-free amounts to households on low incomes, disability benefits and pensions, as energy bills and inflation spiked. If you were on a means-tested benefit, the main series looked like this:
- £326 — July 2022
- £324 — November 2022
- £300 — spring 2023
- £300 — autumn 2023
- £299 — 6 to 22 February 2024 (the final payment)
Alongside those, there was a £150 Disability Cost of Living Payment in September 2022 (and a further one in summer 2023), and pensioner households received an extra £150 or £300 on top of their Winter Fuel Payment in the winters of 2022 and 2023. Every one of these payments was automatic — paid into the account your benefit goes to, with no application, no form and no fee. That detail matters for the scam section below.
Why people still search for a 2026 payment
Three winters of payments trained everyone to expect a fourth. Add social media posts recycling old headlines — often quoting the real historical amounts of £150 or £300, or inventing new ones — and "cost of living payment 2026" keeps trending even though nothing has been announced. DWP's own position, published on GOV.UK, is that it is not planning to make any more Cost of Living Payments. Unless that page changes, any date, amount or "application window" you see quoted for 2026 is not real.
What you actually get in 2026 instead
The support didn't vanish — it changed shape, from cash instalments into bills, discounts and local funds. The pieces that exist this year:
- Lower energy bills from April 2026. Policy costs were removed from household energy bills, expected to save the average household around £150 a year. It arrives as a lower tariff, not a payment — there is nothing to claim.
- Warm Home Discount — £150 off your electricity bill. Expanded for winter 2026/27 to around 6 million households, automatic in England and Wales if you were on a qualifying benefit on 23 August 2026. Full details in our Warm Home Discount 2026/27 guide.
- Winter Fuel Payment — £100 to £300. Still paid to pensioner households each winter (and recovered through the tax system if your income is over £35,000). See the Winter Fuel Payment 2026/27 guide.
- Cold Weather Payments — £25 per cold snap. Automatic payments for each 7-day period at or below 0°C between 1 November 2026 and 31 March 2027, if you're on a qualifying benefit. See the Cold Weather Payment guide.
- April 2026 benefit increases. Universal Credit standard allowance rose 6.2% in April 2026 and most other benefits rose 3.8% — smaller than a lump sum, but permanent and already in your payments.
The local route: the Crisis and Resilience Fund
The closest thing to the old emergency help is local, not national. The Household Support Fund ended on 31 March 2026 and was replaced from 1 April 2026 by the Crisis and Resilience Fund, funded to run until 31 March 2029. Councils use it for application-based crisis payments (food, fuel, essential items after a sudden income shock), help replacing furniture and white goods, and housing-cost support — it also absorbs the old Discretionary Housing Payments.
The catch is that there is no national amount or national rulebook: each council designs its own scheme, and a figure quoted for one area (some councils pay around £200 per crisis application) does not apply in another. If you're in difficulty, search your own council's website for "Crisis and Resilience Fund" and apply there — never through a link in a social post.
The scam pattern to ignore
GOV.UK itself flags this one: if you've had a text, email or message asking you to apply for, or contact someone about, a cost of living payment, it might be a scam. The logic is simple and worth memorising — every real payment in the 2022–2024 series arrived automatically, and there is no 2026 payment to apply for in the first place. Any page asking for bank details, an upfront fee or your benefit login to "release" a cost of living payment is fraud, whatever logo it carries.
Think you missed one of the old payments?
If you were on a qualifying benefit during one of the 2022–2024 rounds and the money never arrived, that is still worth chasing: contact the office that pays your benefit and ask them to explain how the decision was made, with your award details for the qualifying period to hand. What you can't do is claim a 2026 instalment — there isn't one.
And if money is tight right now, the highest-value check is usually not a lump sum at all: millions of households miss out on benefits they're already entitled to. GOV.UK lists independent benefits calculators that estimate what you could get across Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Carer's Allowance and more.
Sources & accuracy: DWP's position that it is not planning any more Cost of Living Payments, and its scam warning about messages asking you to apply, per the GOV.UK guidance update reported at Grimsby Telegraph — DWP confirms Cost of Living Payments update for 2026; final £299 instalment paid 6–22 February 2024 per the scheme history at GovExplained — Cost of Living Payment. Household Support Fund end date (31 March 2026) and Crisis and Resilience Fund replacement (1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029, council-run) per council scheme pages (St Helens, Richmond, BCP), checked 13 October 2026. April 2026 uprating figures per DWP benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027. We are an independent guide, not DWP or HMRC.
Last checked: October 2026