Fact check: Pensioners in Spain and France are excluded from winter fuel payment

Pensioners who live in a selected list of European countries can claim winter fuel payments.

The Port of Duquesa on the Costa del Sol, Spain (Calavision/Alamy/PA)

A widely shared social media post implied that British pensioners on the Costa del Sol were claiming winter fuel payments.

In response to a news article which said that 35,000 claimants of winter fuel payments live abroad, the post remarked: “Freezing pensioners in the Costa del Sol.”

Evaluation

While some pensioners who live abroad have been given winter fuel payments in the past, they have to live in eligible countries.

The list of eligible countries does not include Spain, where the Costa del Sol is situated.

The facts

People in most European Economic Area (EEA) countries are able to claim winter fuel payments if they have a “genuine and sufficient link” to the UK and fulfil some other criteria.

People in all EEA countries could previously claim the payment, but in 2015 the Government excluded some warmer European countries and territories. The countries excluded were Cyprus, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Spain. They were chosen because their average winter temperatures are higher than the warmest region of the UK.

Since then, pensioners on the Costa del Sol have not been entitled to the payments.

Before the recent update, the eligibility criteria were that people needed to have moved to an eligible country before January 1 2021, be born before September 23 1958 and have a “genuine and sufficient link to the UK”.

These criteria have since been updated. But both the new and old criteria require people to live in an eligible country, a list which does not include Spain.

Links

Post on X (archived)

Gov.uk – Winter Fuel Payment, If you live abroad (archived from September 26 and archived from August 3)

House of Commons Library – Changes to Winter Fuel Payment eligibility rules (archived)