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’Early Retirement’
Morning All.
Does anyone have any views on whether a male EEA national who meets the residence requirement of 3 years in the UK and the working requirement of more than a year can retire at Pension Credit age? I’m not sure whether this is what is meant by ‘early retirement’ or whether he can just give up work as a retiring person on the basis that if he was a woman he would have already reached state pension age in the UK.
For obvious reasons I don’t want to advise him to give up work if there’s any doubt whether he’ll be able to claim Pension Credit.
Mairi
To reopen this thread, I have a client in a similar situation and wondered if anyone has any thoughts.
Client (Polish national) is now 64 yrs old and working in UK for just over 4 years up to Jan 2018, at which point (partly on health grounds) he decided to retire and made a claim for SPC. DWP decision recently returned states he does not meet the conditions of entitlement due to not meeting the provisions as set out in Reg 5 of EEA Regs. It acknowledges he was a qualified person during period of employment and that he has now stated he is retired.
Reg 5(1)(a)(ii), corresponding to Article 17 of 2004/38/EC, confirms that a worker who takes early retirement and meets the other conditions of 3 years residency with 1 year employment directly before retiring, can achieve perm R2R before 5 years. However, all the sources I have thus far checked (including Sweet and Maxwell) have shone no light with regards to a definition of early retirement.
I have requested an MR of PC decision, but any further thoughts/ideas/wild speculations would be most welcome!
would permanent incapacity fit?
would permanent incapacity fit?
Thanks WRA; potentially it would. However it appears as a less clear cut argument, and one that the client would have to seek medical evidence to support. You have prompted me to slightly alter the MR request before posting to at least mentioning ill health as a grounds for taking early retirement, in case it does need to be relied upon later.
Hi Simon,
We ended up getting it paid without any problems for the original claimant who remains in receipt after pension age now so definitely worth challenging the refusal.
Mairi
In a new UT case published today, Judge Wright comments on what may amount to ‘early retirement’ (although not deciding the point) - [2018] UKUT 161 (AAC) (not had a detailed look yet but para 34 onwards covers some of the issues).
Thank you for the follow up Mairi, and to Stuart for highlighting the recent decision.
Sadly there is nothing conclusive in the above decision regarding the approach to take re. ‘early retirement’, but it does contain useful pointers:
39. For these reasons I agree with the Secretary of State’s submission that ceasing paid employment to take early retirement requires a definitive step by the retiree to leave the labour market and one which involves a positive decision by the retiree to take early retirement. (As I understand it, the appellant does not now really dissent from dissent form this.) It is not simply a status that may be identified retrospectively by the application of hindsight. How such a positive decision is shown will be a matter for the evidence in the individual case. It may, most obviously, be shown by the person accessing some early retirement allowance or pension from an employer or private/occupational pension provider. However, I decline to rule on what may or may not constitute good evidence of a person having ceased paid employment to take early retirement in what is essentially an evidential matter.