Alternative Fuel Payment/grant received in error?

[CinderellasBoot]

Just received a text from power company saying I've received the Alternative Fuel Payment of £200.

I wasn't expecting it (but won't complain!).

Citizens Advice page says ; If you don't use gas or electricity to heat your home
If you use alternative fuels such as biomass or heating oil, the government will give you a £200 payment to help with your energy bills

but then I also read other stuff online about how if you're off grid gas you're likely to be using oil etc.

We are off grid from gas but use electric heaters.

Do you think my payment is an error?

Are you receiving the £67 rebate via your electricity supplier?

I think they have messed up because it’s too hard to work out the fine details of who should get the payment. I presume you live in an area without mains gas. The government have used various data sources to work out who they think is eligible and supplied this data to the electricity companies.

It applies to anyone who doesn’t have mains gas and uses an alternative fuel (but not electric) to heat their home. It’s a £200 one off payment to compensate for the fact that people using gas and electric have price per unit capped.

The government guidance to the electricity companies says they used:

“Census data on heating type. Provided by ONS and is used to identify the LSOAs that are eligible for automatic payments. BEIS will use this data to eliminate LSOAs that have been identified as predominantly having houses which heat their homes via electricity, as houses which are primarily electrically heated are not in scope of the Alternative Fuel Payment.”

www.gov.uk/government/news/households-businesses-and-organisations-off-the-gas-grid-to-receive-energy-bill-support-over-the-coming-weeks

I don’t think they will be asking for the money back, they just haven’t thought about it in detail. If are concerned stick it in a separate account and forget about it for six months or so.

This happened to me! I have storage heaters but don't use any of the fuels listed for those eligible. Mine came through yesterday via Bulb

I think it would cost more to fine tune who has electric and who has oil / biomass etc so it’s probably gone to most people off mains gas. Electric / storage heaters cost us so much anyway I think we deserve it too 😂

I think it is shitty that electric heating isn't included. There may be a cap on electricity but the increases faced by those on electric heating are huge and electric heating is more expensive than oil.

I mean if it wasn't people would turn off their oil fired boiler and use an electric fan heater.

This is about the type of properties that heat with oil or solid fuel (largely rural) versus the types likely to be heated by electricity (flats and social housing) and keeping the core Tory voters happy.

I’m a rural, oil fired heating, ye olde stone house non Tory voter. Just in case you thought we were a mythical beastie.

Lol I know they exist, I'm talking stereotypes.

Signed a non Tory voting detached semi rural home owner with electric heating