Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced this summer that claims for the allowance, which is intended to help pensioners with energy bills, would be limited to people in receipt of pension credit and other means-tested benefits.
Whitehall staff have been left with a pile-up of 91,075 unprocessed claims as of 18 November, Emma Reynolds, the pensions minister said.
To deal with the backlog, the Government department has put 500 extra staff in place, but the risk remains that many claims will remain outstanding heading in to the new year.
The decision to scrap the benefit was met with a great deal of anger but the Government hopes that the policy will help it cope with the £22bn fiscal black hole which Labour says was left behind by the Conservatives.
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Read MoreNot all applications, once processed, are successful though.
Some 92,000 pension credit claims were rejected by the government between April and December this year while 91,000 claims were awarded.
Data from the DWP shows that in the week of 18 November, the average processing time for a pension credit application was 65 working days, or 13 weeks, up from nine weeks at the end of July.
In August, DWP was processing around 4,500 claims per week but in the first half of November, it was getting through an average of around 9,000.
A Government spokesperson said: “Over a million pensioners will still receive the winter fuel payment, and our drive to boost pension credit take-up has seen applications more than double with over 40,000 more pensioners now receiving it, as well as the winter fuel payment.
“We continue to urge anyone who thinks they may be entitled to pension credit to check now, as all eligible claims can be backdated, and anyone who makes a successful claim before 21 December will receive their payment.”
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