Tens of thousands of elderly in Yorkshire miss out on energy support payment

The charity said that almost three quarters of a million households missed out on support under the Energy Bills Support Scheme, amounting to almost £3 million.

This includes over 50,000 in Yorkshire, where only 16.6 per cent of households received the £400 payment, the third lowest uptake in the country behind London and the North East.

The fund – for households without a direct relationship to a domestic energy supplier, such as those in park homes or living on boats – has already faced criticism from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The MPs said, in a June report, that many such households only became eligible for funding at the end of February, almost five months after consumers began receiving discounts on the main scheme.

Now Age UK has said Freedom of Information data requested on its behalf showed that, of the Government’s estimated 883,000 eligible UK households with atypical supply arrangements, only around 17 per cent – equivalent to about 150,000 – were actually awarded the £400 of energy support available this year.

In terms of who was able to successfully access the funding, Age UK said eligible care home residents were least likely to have done so, with only around one in 14 of them (7 per cent) receiving the £400 energy help.

This compared to around a third of park home and houseboat residents (35 per cent) and over half of eligible heat network users (58 per cent).

The Government said it had spent billions to protect families from price rises last winter and had used various ways to “communicate the scheme with as many eligible households as possible”.

But the charity said the findings showed the scheme for these users had “completely flopped” – blaming a “time-consuming, complicated” application process that it said had not been well enough publicised.