PLN 3,500 to be paid. Applications began being accepted on November 3rd.

• Local government offices are starting to accept applications for heating vouchers.
• Local government officials expect a real flood of applications that will not meet the criteria.
• They did not receive any funding from the government for this task, so they are demanding a lump sum of PLN 60 for each negative decision.

The issue of the heating voucher was raised at the last meeting of the Joint Government and Local Government Commission, not because of the need to service residents in connection with the payment of this benefit, but rather because of the refusals that offices will be required to issue . Mass action is being prepared on this issue. Residents will be submitting applications for the heating voucher starting November 3rd, even though few of them meet the conditions specified in the Heating Voucher Act .

According to it, a heating voucher may be granted to households:

• with an average monthly income of: PLN 3,272.69 in the case of a single-person household, PLN 2,454.52 per person in the case of a multi-person household;
• using heat from the heating system supplied by the energy company;
• when the single-component net heat price in a given tariff group is above PLN 170 per GJ .

According to local government officials, there are municipalities in Poland where not a single resident meets these criteria.

"In Krakow, 90 percent of apartments are currently excluded. In Łódź, perhaps 200 people will receive a voucher," said Marek Wójcik, an expert at the Association of Polish Cities and co-secretary of the KWRiST.

Only that - as he emphasized:

applications will be submitted, and therefore offices will have to issue negative decisions in the form of administrative decisions , which require special attention and involvement of employees.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Energy, which is responsible for implementing this program, has not allocated any funds for this purpose.

Only approved applications are financed from the state budget , which seems rather odd given that local governments are implementing government tasks. According to local government officials, this violates the constitutional principle that local governments receive an adequate pool of funds for government administrative tasks.

In connection with the above, local government officials proposed that the Ministry of Energy allocate a lump sum of PLN 60 for this purpose per rejected application .

They also presented the source of financing for this expense, which – until statutory solutions are introduced – could be a reserve planned for 2025 to supplement subsidies for local government units for the implementation of mandated tasks, as well as unused funds from the PLN 883 million allocated in the state budget for the payment of this voucher. According to local government officials, there are simply too many of them.

Unfortunately, so far, this proposal has not been met with understanding by Deputy Minister of Energy Konrad Wojnarowski. In response, he only stated that the Ministry of Energy does not currently plan to increase the financial resources allocated to municipalities for the administration of the heating voucher .

We are of the opinion that any action taken to introduce solutions guaranteeing local government units additional funds to cover the costs of issuing the above-mentioned decisions will be the result of the evaluation of the functioning of the support mechanisms in the form of a voucher for the first period of the voucher's operation, i.e. the first quarter of 2026.

- said Wojnarowski.

He also stressed that the opinion of the Minister of Finance and Economy regarding the possibilities of financing the state budget will be decisive in this matter.

This only heated up the discussion, which resulted, among other things, in a general summary of the government's activities.

The government administration specializes in defrauding local government units of financing government administration tasks.

- said an agitated Grzegorz Kubalski, deputy director of the office of the Association of Polish Counties.

He also announced that the Union of Polish Employers will seek punishment for the person responsible for this state of affairs.

It seems that local government officials will not let this matter rest, and the matter will soon be resolved. According to the provisions of the act, the heating voucher will be available for 2025 and 2026.

Household owners will therefore be able to apply for this benefit twice:

• from November 3 to December 15, 2025 for the period July 1 - December 31, 2025 and
• from July 1 to August 31, 2026 for the period January 1 - December 31, 2026

Therefore, if nothing changes, in the case of most of these applications local governments will have to issue a negative decision twice.

The heating voucher is a cash benefit that supports low-income households experiencing a sharp increase in the price of district heating supplied by energy companies due to the expiry of the so-called maximum heat supply price mechanism on June 30 this year.

The heating voucher will be awarded twice:

For the period from 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2025 (one-off) in the amount of PLN 500 - when the heat price is higher than 170 PLN/GJ and not higher than 200 PLN/GJ; in the amount of PLN 1,000 - when the heat price is higher than 200 PLN/GJ and not higher than 230 PLN/GJ; in the amount of PLN 1,750 - when the heat price is higher than 230 PLN/GJ.

For the period from January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026, the voucher will be granted once in the amount of PLN 1,000 - when the heat price is higher than PLN 170/GJ and not higher than PLN 200/GJ; in the amount of PLN 2,000 - when the heat price is higher than PLN 200/GJ and not higher than PLN 230/GJ; in the amount of PLN 3,500 - when the heat price is higher than PLN 230/GJ.