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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Benefits for older people  →  Thread

Escalation numbers for Pension Service

Ali D
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NHAS housing/debt caseworker - Shelter

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Please can anybody help me out by providing a contact number for somebody helpful at Pension Services. I have a client who is now at grave risk of losing his home due to delays in putting a claim into payment. The claim was submitted in December 2016 and he was advised that it would be in payment by the end of January.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Sorry for not replying sooner but as it happens, I don’t have any either, ironically.

Which is a bit of a pain as we’re having a couple of problems with Pension Service not issuing decision notices and so on.

Depending on what’s happened since, is he still having problems? Happy to help if so.

[ Edited: 11 May 2017 at 08:47 pm by Paul_Treloar_AgeUK ]
Ali D
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Thanks Paul.  Happily the claim has gone into payment and the backdate is allowing the client to start payments on the mortgage as we are now dealing with the familiar problem of the lender losing the MI 12 forms.  The situation is not going to be helped by the recent news that the interest rate for SMI is being reduced again and will fall to 2.61% from 18th June 2017. We are expecting to see a big rise of possession issues from households (particularly those with older mortgages at higher interest rates) who have been barely managing to cover the mortgage payments finding that they can no longer do so.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Ali D - 12 May 2017 08:03 AM

Thanks Paul.  Happily the claim has gone into payment and the backdate is allowing the client to start payments on the mortgage as we are now dealing with the familiar problem of the lender losing the MI 12 forms.  The situation is not going to be helped by the recent news that the interest rate for SMI is being reduced again and will fall to 2.61% from 18th June 2017. We are expecting to see a big rise of possession issues from households (particularly those with older mortgages at higher interest rates) who have been barely managing to cover the mortgage payments finding that they can no longer do so.

Blimey, didn’t realise that there was a new reduction to SMI, that’s alarming.

Ali D
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We received notification from the DWP on Wednesday - ” This is to let you know that the Bank of England published average mortgage rate for March published on 4 May triggered a reduction in the standard interest rate used to calculate support for mortgage interest from 3.12% to 2.61%. This change will take effect from 18 June from when the standard interest rate will be 2.61%”. Talk about putting the boot in!

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Thanks for letting us know Ali, we’ll try to let our local advisers know about this.

Stuart
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Here’s the Bank of England information notifying the change in their average to 2.61 per cent. (checking the means tested benefit rules the new rate takes effect if it differs by more than 0.5 per cent from old rate).

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/Pages/efr/2017/mar.aspx

Benny Fitzpatrick
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But still no escalation numbers for the Pension Service?

Pity! In my experience possibly the worst arm of the DWP when it comes to customer “service”. Rude, obstructive, virtually unaccountable and appear to believe they are above the Law.

Jon (CANY)
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Recent HB bulletins still refer to ‘Pension Centre Liaison Officers’. If you’re really stuck, maybe someone friendly in local authority benefits can raise a case through their PCLO.

Daphne
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Ali D - 12 May 2017 09:35 AM

We received notification from the DWP on Wednesday - ” This is to let you know that the Bank of England published average mortgage rate for March published on 4 May triggered a reduction in the standard interest rate used to calculate support for mortgage interest from 3.12% to 2.61%. This change will take effect from 18 June from when the standard interest rate will be 2.61%”. Talk about putting the boot in!

Interest rate change now confirmed on gov.uk - https://www.gov.uk/support-for-mortgage-interest/what-youll-get