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Amazed at the reasons why Pension Credit is not being claimed
As a local Town Councillor and Chairman of a charity, I have a special interest in ‘poverty amongst the older generation’.
I chaired a recent meeting and the main topic was the loss of monies to the government by those that can least afford it.
I quoted that approx 1.4 million older people each year are allowing the government to keep approx £3bn of their money.
The Question and Answer session went on for over 2 hours and out of the number of people who were in attendance (78) nearly 2/3rds had heard about Pension Credit but were not claiming it. They gave many reasons.
I believe, that after the meeting and speaking to quite a few, there were 18 at least that would qualify for some level of GPC.
If I am right that is approx 25% of those that attended.
Does anybody know if there Is any justifiable reason as to why the government are not promoting this vital benefit?
If I found 18 possible claimants in just over 3 hours, why aren’t the DWP doing something about it?
Am I missing something here?
The Pension Service was set up to be some kind of gold standard agency. Proactively pursuing benefit take-up and partnership; home visiting as needed and so on. It was never going to last and it hasn’t. The present government has no interest in people taking up their benefit entitlements unless it suits a specific agenda. Pension Credit doesn’t.
Our service produced a leaflet on Pension Credit Myths some years back. What was interesting was that it was put together with older people and often led by them. This inevitably meant considerable delays as some aspects were argued out and the language repeatedly revised but it was widely distributed and received considerable praise from all who came across it. My recall is that using the views of older peoples groups; partner agencies and so on we identified something like 19 myths and 14 main ones. I think we used what everyone considered to be the top 5 or 6 in the leaflet to aid the simplicity of the message.
In my experience I would say your 25% is an underestimate. We did targeted take-up with older people and there was an underclaim in around 65 to 75% of cases.
However, one of the things you have to be careful of is related to said myths. Many older people have not declared occupational or other pensions because they’ve either forgotten they had them or believe them to not be income but a right. Makes overpayments cases interesting.
You will probably want to read the attached - Pension Credit eligible non-recipients: Barriers to claiming
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/214374/rrep819.pdf
....and this.
Quantitative Evaluation of the Pension Credit Payment Study
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/214583/rrep796.pdf
I’ve been banging on about Pension Credit take-up for years. One problem is the demographic. Even in the good old days of take-up campaigns, everybody headed for the nearest sink estates. The PC group most likely to underclaim is home owners - and rural ones too. Door knocking around often expensive isolated rural properties didn’t seem to be top of anyone’s priorities.
Thanks John really handy! 2007 seems so ancient now!
It does if you look at these - how we adopt & forget so quickly
http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2007/05/13/phones-review-ultimate-top-10-mobiles-2007/