BENEFITS EXPERT: What you need to know about the £150 cost of living support payments

There is no need to apply, provided you received the qualifying benefit on or before May 25, 2022.

The qualifying benefits (for England and Wales) are Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments, Armed Forces Independence Payments and War Pension Mobility Supplement.

If you get a payment of one of these benefits from the DWP and another from the MOD you will only get one payment from DWP.

If you have a household and each member of the household gets a qualifying benefit then each person will get £150.

This includes any children under 16 who gets DLA. If payment is made in error i.e. you do not meet the criteria but are paid nevertheless by the DWP they will reserve the right to recover.

These payments will be ignored as income or capital for the purposes of other benefits you may get that are means-tested: the money can be used for anything, it is not intended to be ring-fenced for a certain payment, such as ever increasing energy costs.

The government has confirmed that payments will begin on September 22, 2022, and it expects most payments to be made by the second week of October.

We suspect similar to the £650 payments that there will be an online facility for people to report non-payment if you haven’t received the money by then.

It is worth noting that you might have commenced a claim before the cut-off date of May 25, but were unsuccessful, you can however have a pending mandatory reconsideration or appeal that later succeeds.

We would expect payments will be released in this situation but this may not be the case.

Guidance issued by the government has indicated that if you do not get a payment but clearly demonstrate that the criteria is met you have no right to challenge this via the normal mechanisms such as appeal or mandatory reconsideration.

This may in itself be an unlawful position held by the government and could be subject to future legal challenges.