DWP launches pension credit awareness campaign

The Division for Work and Pensions (DWP) has launched a brand new pension credit score consciousness drive, urging pensioners to verify their eligibility for Pension Credit score so as to safe this 12 months’s winter gas fee.

The DWP identified that while round 1.4 million pensioners are already receiving pension credit score, there are as much as an estimated 880,000 households eligible for the help who’re but to assert.

Certainly, current figures from the DWP confirmed that pension credit score uptake dipped barely over the previous 12 months, with 11,000 fewer recipients in contrast with the identical interval final 12 months and 24,000 fewer in contrast with 2022.

This comes at a time when pension credit score has grow to be ‘all of the extra essential’ as a result of Labour authorities’s adjustments to the winter gas fee, which imply it would solely be paid to these claiming pension credit score or different means examined advantages.

The federal government’s pension credit score consciousness will subsequently goal to assist establish households not claiming the profit, and encourage pensioners to use by 21 December, the final date for making a backdated declare for Pension Credit score, so as to obtain the winter gas fee.

Throughout the week of motion, which is ready to begin in September, the DWP and its companions will likely be tackling among the myths which will cease individuals making use of, similar to how having financial savings, a pension or proudly owning a house are usually not essentially boundaries to receiving pension credit score.

This work is anticipated to construct on final 12 months’s invitation to assert pilots, the place letters and leaflets have been focused at households already in receipt of housing profit, however not claiming pension credit score in 10 native authorities.

Commenting on the launch of the brand new marketing campaign, Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, mentioned: “The £22bn black gap within the public funds now we have inherited has required us to take troublesome choices, however I’m decided to make sure low-income pensioners are supported.

“That’s why I urge any pensioner, or their family members, to verify if they may get pension credit score.”

She additionally reiterated the federal government’s dedication to the state pension triple lock, including: “This authorities stays fully dedicated to pensioners which is why we’re defending the revenue of over 12 million pensioners by the triple lock.”

Certainly, pensioners are anticipated to profit from an extra increase in state pension underneath the triple lock this 12 months, with trade specialists just lately suggesting that wage progress will likely be used to uprate the state pension underneath the triple lock subsequent month, after the most recent information from the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics (ONS) revealed that annual progress in earnings (together with bonuses) was 4.5 per cent for the April-June 2024 interval.

Nevertheless, trade specialists have warned that the federal government may face an ‘uphill battle’ in its push to extend pension credit score uptake, with AJ Bell director of public coverage, Tom Selby, arguing that “the last-ditch consciousness push introduced by the federal government as we speak is welcome nevertheless it faces a stiff problem in overturning what has been a persistent pension credit score claims hole over time”.

“Authorities might want to actually drive residence the message this time and may have to consider alternative ways to succeed in potential claimants,” he acknowledged.

Hargreaves Lansdown head of retirement evaluation, Helen Morrissey, additionally pressured that the pension credit score consciousness marketing campaign could have “rather a lot driving on it”.

“Earlier makes an attempt to spice up take up haven’t been vastly profitable with solely round two-thirds of those that are eligible for it really claiming it,” she continued.

“As but, we don’t know way more about how the federal government will attain potential claimants aside from that they are going to be working with native authorities and charities.

“Nevertheless, we hope exercise continues effectively past the deliberate week of motion as we’ll want a sustained effort over an extended time interval to actually interact individuals.”