DWP latest news: Cost of living payments, benefits and pensions September dates

The UK acquired a uncommon flurry of constructive financial information in mid-August when the Office for National Statistics introduced that wage will increase had gone up at a document price, that inflation had fallen to 6.8 per cent and that meals costs had begun to climb down.

While these may need recommended the fee of living was lastly easing, the positivity masked the truth that core inflation – which removes risky meals and power costs from the equation – remained stubbornly unchanged at 6.9 per cent, main some consultants to warn that any positive aspects could be “swallowed up” by greater borrowing prices.

With inflation nonetheless properly north of its 2 per cent goal, the Bank of England appears to be like all however sure to implement an extra rate of interest rise when its Monetary Policy Committee subsequent meets in September in a bid to tame it.

That is prone to take the present 5.25 per cent base price as much as 5.5 per cent, an extra unwelcome growth for a lot of already scuffling with mortgage funds, significantly these with tracker or customary variable price mortgages that comply with the central financial institution’s lead.

“Most people haven’t yet felt the interest rate squeeze in full, and it’s only when historic fixed rates roll off that we’ll really know the full extent of the economic pain rate rises have inflicted,” Wealth Club funding supervisor Nicholas Hyett has warned. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

With that in thoughts, here’s a take a look at what state monetary help is offered to households this September.

Support funds

Despite the expiration of Rishi Sunak’s Energy Bill Support Scheme on the finish of March (an initiative that handed out £400 in month-to-month instalments of £66 and £67), thousands and thousands of households on low incomes will obtain additional value of living help from the federal government this yr price as much as £1,350 in whole.

Eight million eligible means-tested benefits claimants, together with individuals on common credit score, pension credit score and tax credit, will obtain the subsequent £300 instalment of the fee of living funds as half of a programme that started this spring, with the cash going on to financial institution accounts in three tranches, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stated. The funds will whole £900 general.

There may also be a separate £150 fee for greater than six million individuals with disabilities and an additional £300 for over eight million pensioners.

Here are the payment windows which were introduced thus far, with extra exact dates anticipated later within the yr:

Benefits going out as regular

The regular state help within the form of benefits and pensions funds may also be going out as regular in September, with no financial institution holidays scheduled to confuse supply dates.

Anyone anticipating to obtain any of the next from the DWP can count on their cash on the standard date this month.

For extra info on how and when state benefits are paid, please go to the government’s website.

Energy Price Guarantee expired as cap lowered

The belated enchancment within the climate we are able to count on in September won’t be comfy for everybody however it can at the least significantly cut back the necessity for having the central heating switched on, which proved such an expense over the course of the winter simply gone.

The authorities’s Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) – launched by short-lived prime minister Liz Truss a yr in the past to make sure households paid not more than £2,500 for his or her electrical energy and gasoline, with the federal government subsidising the rest owed to suppliers beneath Ofgem’s Energy Price Cap (EPC) – was prolonged by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his Budget of 15 March for an extra three months.

Mr Hunt had reportedly been tempted to extend the EPG to £3,000, a significantly much less beneficiant supply that might have eased the burden on the state, however finally thought higher of it, extending the assure into April, May and June.

Now that the EPG has lastly expired, customers will as soon as extra be paying the EPC price, which Ofgem set at £2,074 for the third quarter starting 1 July, an enormous fall from the £3,280 it was set at through the second quarter, from which households had been shielded by the intervention of the federal government’s overriding assure.

That 17 per cent lower displays latest drops in wholesale power costs – the quantity power corporations pay for electrical energy and gasoline earlier than supplying it to households – and, though it’s a important drop from the eye-watering charges of the final two years, the determine stays greater than £1,000 a yr above pre-pandemic ranges.

As for what would possibly occur subsequent, consultancy agency Cornwall Insight predicts that July’s fall will probably be followed by another drop in October, when it expects the standard annual invoice to be £1,860.66.

Unfortunately, it believes the standard invoice will then rise once more in January 2024 to £1,958.81 and Cornwall doesn’t count on power costs to return to pre-Covid ranges earlier than the top of the last decade on the earliest.

It has additionally warned clients that costs stay topic to wholesale market volatility, with the UK’s reliance on power imports that means that geopolitical incidents just like the warfare in Ukraine may proceed to have a detrimental influence.