If client is in receipt of small amount of pension credit (&7.10) would they still be eligable for full housing benefit.

The reason pension credit is low is because they had savings but two yrs ago gave them to a family member, how long is it before the savings can be disregarded for pension credit purposes.

Hi, season's greetings,
The client will get full HB if the £7.10 they receive is the Guarantee Credit. If they only get the Savings Credit, it will depend on their total income and capital as to whether they get HB/CTB.

If the Pension Service reckon your client deprived themselves of capital 2 years ago, it will diminish over time, but it depends on how much they gifted and whether they get Guarantee Credits. Your client probably has 'notional capital. I say 'has', they don't have it, but TPS consider them to have it. 'Diminishing Notional Capital' rules are a bit complicated, but, broadly speaking, the capital diminishes weekly by the amount of benefits they would have been entitled to but for the deprivation. As a simple illustration, if they were considered to have deprived themselves of £5,200, and their total benefits entitlement was £100 a week, it would reduce by that much a week, so would take 52 weeks to disappear. If they get the GC bit, then the same amount would only reduce by £11 a week to start with (because £5.2K would earn them that much in assumed income). I think you can ask for the figure to be recalculated every 26 weeks. So the answer to your second part is a piece of string. Post more details and I can tell you more.

Hi and a happy new year to you to

Thanks for your reply to my query,

Basically client was in receipt of pension credit until April of this yr at a rate of 52.20 a week then it stopped. After many phonecalls a full benefit check and several letters they have now received a determination letter stating!

From 3rd April to the 9th April 2006 they will receive 52.20, then from 10th April onwards they will receive 7.10 savings credit per week.

The amount gifted away was just over 28 thousand.

Looks like they will not be entitled to any housing benefit either, which is going to leave client in a very poor financial state.

Why did they give the capital away? It only hangs around as notional capital if one of the reasons was to get/hang onto/increase benefits. If there was no intention to claim benefits at the time (could be shown by long delay before claim) or they didn't know capital affected benefits, then it can't be notional capital. If they were already on beenfits and got rid of the oney quickly to avoid its effect on their benefits that would be a whole nother ball game.

Brigid

It is complicated but money was owed to family member and there was no underlying attempt to hide capital.

Client had been holding funds in his name for them for a while for personal reasons, not realising the on-going effect it was going to have on their future finances.

Believe it was some sort of insurance in clients name, client had to finish work about 10 yrs early due to illness and disabilities, family kept payments up to date and when it matured the funds were given to them as previously agreed.

Problem is client is now paying full rent etc on a small pension with no savings of their own.

OK, try arguing either that it is repaying a debt (to which notional capital rules don't apply for pension credit) or that the money was subject to a trust in favour of the family member and the client was under an obligation to pass it to them. If there's any documentary evidence to support either claim use it, but whatever the DM may say, there is no rule that a trust of anything except land has to be evidenced in writing. Especially if it's a resulting trust - one where money is provided by another person and for whatever reason happens to be in your name, but there was no intention of a gift. The law is especially kind in these circumstances as there is a (weak, but genuine) presumption of a resulting trust on these facts.

Brigid

ok thanks very much for that information, I presume an appeal is the way to go in the first instance.