Help! Client and wife each 69. For some reason, they never claimed their SRPs at the appropriate ages. He claimed Incap and MIG - later PC Guarantee for them as a couple. She has never received SRP or anything in her own right. They then receive letters saying that PC (G) is stopping, they must claim state pensions and they have entitlement to lump sums of £40k between them.

I rang the Pension Service unit in Walsall set up to deal with such cases. The officer there told me that due to a lapse in the legislation, such people who never claimed their SRPs are treated as if they deferred them and are able to receive the lump sum and the increased rate of SRP. There is no offset. I then picked myself up off the floor.

For Housing Benefits, the lump sum is disregarded indefinitely, so client would still have some HB entitlement. The client was then dancing round the room. However I can't find out the effect on Pension Credit. Arrears of SRP are not in the list of disregards in the DMG so I believe that they would not be ignored, even though this was not a wilful failure to claim SRP.

Can anyone throw any light on this? Thanks

Had quite a few of these last year one person aged 85 got a lump sum of £80,000, despite being on other means tested benefits since 60.

As a Welfare Rights worker I was delighted for the people who had these large windfalls, as a tax payer I was totally pi*sed off that such a thing could be allowed to happen.

I even got our local M.P involved as it seemed so wrong to allow people who had been getting various means tested benefits for many years have such large lump sums for deferring their old age pensions, when in fact they had lost and done without nothing by doing so.

They failed to understand my concerns and after writting to various other M.P's came back and said it was to reward them for deferring, totally missing my point.

The lump sum will be fully ignored for ever by Pension Credit by the way, see CPAG page 965 near the bottom, remember they are not getting the old age pension backdated they are being rewarded with a lump sum for deferring.

Thank you. I looked at the DMG and tried to find the regs, but somehow missed that in CPAG!