Byzantine requests for evidence

In my recent scrutiny of all things Pension Credit I’ve seen a couple of cases now where the Pensions Service have made ridiculous requests for evidence; sight of original documents that are then destroyed rather than returned and in another case a history of the residence dating back 30 years and evidence to accompany it.

Is this a thing or are they outliers?

It’s a thing Dan. One of the worst we saw was a client who had gone back to India for 13 weeks (as he wasn’t aware of reduction to 4 weeks) and on his return, they wanted all sorts of evidence to prove that he had habitual residence in the UK, despite the fact it was clearly a temporary absence, notwithstanding it was longer than what was now allowed.

Cheers Paul

If you hear of anything vaguely North West would you push it in my direction? I have an urge to make some noise about it; I’ll probably append something to the next round of our publicity.