DWP confirms when millions will get £10 Christmas bonus – what it would be worth if it had matched inflation
Millions of benefit claimants will receive an annual £10 Christmas bonus from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) within days.
The payment will be made in the first week of December to those claiming certain benefits, including Pension Credit and Personal Independence Allowance (PIP).
All payments will be made by January 1, 2025, the DWP has confirmed.
The £10 Christmas bonus has been paid out since 1972.
It has never been increased, apart from one year in 2008, when it was temporarily increased to £70 to help people during the financial crisis.
That £10 bonus in 1972 would have risen to around £184 today if it had kept pace with RPI inflation, Money’s inflation calculator shows.
Don’t spend it all at once: the £10 Christmas bonus can buy you a few decent Christmas puddings, but not much more as the value hasn’t increased for decades
If the £10 had risen with consumer price inflation, which has only been Britain’s official measure of inflation since 2003, it would now be worth £115.
Couples can each get a £10 Christmas bonus if they each get a qualifying benefit.
If you get one of the following benefits, you will receive the Christmas bonus in the first week of December:
- Adult Disability Payment
- Armed Forces Independence Pay
- Attendance allowance
- Healthcare allowance
- Payment for caregiver support
- Payment for child disability
- Constant attendance allowance (paid for industrial accidents or war pensions)
- Contribution-based employment and support benefit
- Housing benefit for the disabled
- Disability benefit at the long-term rate
- Industrial death benefit (for widows or widowers)
- Mobility supplement
- Retirement age disability benefit
- Pension credit – the guarantee element
- Personal Independence Payment (PIP)
- State pension
- Severe disability benefit
- Unemployment supplement or benefit (paid for work accidents or war pensions)
- War disability pension at state pension age
- War widow’s pension
- Allowance for widowed mother
- Allowance for widowed parents
- Widow’s pension
You do not need to claim the Christmas bonus, it will be automatically deposited into your bank account.
The bonus does not affect other benefits and is tax-free.
The payment should appear on your bank statements as ‘DWP XB’.
To receive the Christmas bonus, you must be resident or ‘ordinarily resident’ in Great Britain, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or Gibraltar during the ‘qualifying week’ – the first week of December.
