Winter Heating Assistance (Pension Age) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025: Policy Note

Cross-border Moves

If a client moves out of Scotland and is no longer ordinarily resident in Scotland by the last day of the qualifying week, they are not treated as meeting the conditions to be ordinarily resident in Scotland. The qualifying week is taken as a proxy for the individual’s circumstances for the forthcoming winter; where someone has ceased to be ordinarily resident in Scotland by the end of the qualifying week, it is therefore taken that they will not be resident in Scotland throughout the winter, and so they would no longer meet the residency criteria. This prevents a client from being eligible for both PAWHP and Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), in the event of a cross-border move from Scotland to England, for example, during the qualifying week.