October dates for benefits, pensions and cost of living payments

An extra rate of interest rise to five.5 per cent might properly be on the playing cards this autumn.

Though the Shopper Costs Index measure of inflation fell from 7.9 per cent in June to six.8 per cent in July, it nonetheless stays properly above the Financial institution of England’s 2 per cent goal.

The Financial institution’s Financial Coverage Committee, the physique liable for the choice, has already signalled its intention to announce one other hike going into October, with policymaker Catherine Mann telling the Canadian Affiliation for Enterprise Economics she is inclined to “err on the aspect of over-tightening” to keep away from “embedding” inflation.

Such a transfer would characterize an additional unwelcome improvement for a lot of owners already battling mortgage funds, significantly these with tracker or customary variable-rate mortgages that comply with the central financial institution’s lead, though Ms Mann did add: “If I’m improper, and inflation decelerates extra rapidly and exercise deteriorates extra considerably, I cannot hesitate to chop charges.”

The information earlier this summer time that British wages had risen at a file price and that meals costs in supermarkets had begun to climb down may need urged the price of residing disaster was lastly on its means out.

Nevertheless, the positivity masked the truth that core inflation – which removes risky meals and power costs from the equation – stays stubbornly unchanged at 6.9 per cent, main some specialists to warn that any beneficial properties could be devoured by the ever-higher price of borrowing.

With that irritating backdrop in thoughts, here’s a have a look at what state monetary assist is out there to households this October.

Help funds

Regardless of the expiration of Rishi Sunak’s Power Invoice Help Scheme on the finish of March this 12 months (an initiative that handed out £400 in month-to-month instalments of £66 and £67), hundreds of thousands of households on low incomes will obtain additional price of residing assist from the federal government value as much as £1,350 in whole this calendar 12 months.

Eight million eligible means-tested advantages claimants, together with folks on common credit score, pension credit score and tax credit, will quickly obtain the subsequent £300 instalment of the price of residing funds as a part of a programme that started this spring, with the cash going on to financial institution accounts in three tranches, the Division for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stated.

The funds will whole £900 total.

A separate £150 fee for greater than six million folks with disabilities has already gone out and an additional £300 for over eight million pensioners is coming this winter.

Listed here are the fee home windows which were introduced to this point, with extra exact dates anticipated later within the 12 months:

Advantages going out as standard

The same old state assist within the form of advantages and pensions funds can even be going out as regular in October, with no financial institution holidays scheduled to confuse supply dates.

Anybody anticipating to obtain any of the next from the DWP can count on their cash on the standard date this month.

For extra data on how and when state advantages are paid, please go to the federal government’s web site.

Power Worth Cap drops once more

The sweltering late summer time heatwave we noticed in September won’t have been comfy for everybody nevertheless it did no less than enormously scale back the necessity for having the central heating switched on, which proved such an expense over the course of final winter.

We are able to count on a few of that heat to linger as autumn will get underway in earnest, additional decreasing the demand on radiators, in the intervening time no less than.

In the meantime, the power disaster that started to drive up electrical energy and gasoline costs a 12 months in the past has largely been introduced beneath management and the federal government’s Power Worth Assure (EPG) – launched by short-lived prime minister Liz Truss in September 2022 to make sure households paid not more than £2,500 for his or her energy, with the federal government subsidising the rest owed to suppliers beneath Ofgem’s Power Worth Cap (EPC) – lastly fell into irrelevance when the cap dropped beneath £2,500 in July.

At that time, with a dramatic lower of 17 per cent from £3,280 within the second quarter to £2,074 for the third coming into impact, the common shopper reverted to paying the cap’s price as regular, rendering a corresponding hike within the EPG to £3,000 a innocent technicality for many.

Ofgem has since introduced that the EPC will likely be set at £1,923 for the ultimate quarter of the 12 months (or £1,949 for these on pre-payment plans).

The newest fall is reflective of latest drops in wholesale power costs – the quantity power companies pay for his or her electrical energy and gasoline earlier than supplying it to households – and, though it’s a vital slide from the eye-watering charges of the final two years, the determine nonetheless stays nearly £1,000 a 12 months above pre-pandemic ranges.

As for what may occur subsequent, analysts at Cornwall Perception see nearly no change possible by the point the subsequent EPC is introduced for the quarter starting 1 January 2024, at which level it predicts the standard annual invoice be at £1,932.24.

The forecaster is at the moment predicting small declines for the second and third quarters of subsequent 12 months as properly earlier than a slight uptick is available in for October 2024.

Regardless of that, the image is, on the entire, trying much more steady than it did a 12 months in the past, when the rumbles of Russia’s warfare in Ukraine had been first being felt in world power markets.