Cold weather payments - trying for commonsense
Cold weather payments are important for vulnerable older people on specific benefits and help pay their fuel bills when the temperature drops below 0c for a consistent period. I've been campaigning since January 2009 to get some commonsense to apply to how we find out whether it's cold enough to trigger the payments.
Last January as a result of a question I raised in Parliament, it became clear that the weather stations used to determine whether local people qualified for cold weather payments were miles away at Brize Norton, High Wycombe and South Farnborough where the weather conditions are often very different. We have a perfectly good weather station on our doorstep at RAF Benson but it is not used.
I asked Helen Goodman MP, the Minister responsible, to review whether RAF Benson could be used to determine these payments. However my request was rejected on the grounds that the change would only affect a relatively small area i.e. the whole of the Henley constituency!
