Pension Credit Claimants

[wordswort]

I've just had the 5th request so far this year from the PC dept demanding data on my savings, and  pension income.

Each such demand is identical to its predecessor.   I average 6 such per year and have done so since my retirement.

My latest arrived today.  It was the third such since July.  It states that the PC people want to send a 'visitor' to my house in view of my 'changed circumstances'.

There have been no changes.

Now if this is normal for PC claimants I've no complaints.  The information they keep asking for is easy to provide - I've got quite good at it!

But friends in my position say I seem to be attracting far more demands per year than they do.

I particularly object to the demand to visit me.   If they were to write and say I could request a visit were I to feel I need one, that would be OK ; but being told they intend to visit in 48 hours time is a quite different matter.

What do any of you PC claimants think.  Am I being paranoic?

[Chrisjay]

I do not think you are being paranoid as a few months ago the PC demanded I attend a 'under caution' interview as 'my circumstances had changed' which they had not, it was a malicious call to the benefits fraud office but several things became apparent and one was that they can get copies of your bank statements from your bank without your permission or any form of court order so I asked in view of them seeing my bank statements what had changed?  I did take a solicitor with me who was very aggressive in her attitude to the PC people and since then I have heard nothing else and neither has she.
However, I was very upset by this action from them and as I am still struggling 18 months after my retirement to get the pension and benefits I'm entitled to but it is now very personal to get it sorted.
Also a tip which may work is to mark any duplicate forms as 'as before' and send them back in their pre paid envelope if they do not normally send one photocopy the next one you get and stick it on an envelope (I never put a stamp on anything I send them) also as a pensioner you may be entitled to free legal aid (in Wales any pensioner is entitled to FLA) so take a solicitor with you or have one present in your house this does tend to put a stop to their antics.
I think we are going to have to accept pensioners are an easy target for their statistics as we do not tend to complain when we are being unfairly targeted, I wish I could say things will change but until we unite into one strong voice I fear we will continue to be abused as is very apparent with the new housing allowance changes that are very quietly being rolled out and leaving many pensioners in private rented accommodation facing loosing their homes.

[wordswort]

I have never had any argument about how much I'm paid, everything happens as it should.

But I do wonder about the amount of repeat-information they demand.  Since my earlier post I've called their helpline number and explained that because we are both on internet banking the reperat copies of original documents dating back to my original retirement date no longer exist.

I've suggested they send their rep here if they must, and I'll open up my intenet banking on my server for them to see it's all kosher.

But I wish they'd tell me what - if anything - they think I might have been up to.

Something else : the new gov. might decide to more closely means test pensionsers' bus-passes, housing benefit, cold-weather payments, etc.  And this could be the first step.

I've no argument with that ; seems fair.

We'll see.  Meantime, the PC helpline promised (!)  a phone call 'soon' when I called the to say the meeting arranged for tomorrow was not on. 

I'll report back to whomever is interested later.

[Papaumau]

Wordswort and Chris.....

I have carefully read what you both have written and I commisserate with you both on that awful situation.

Being an ex-civil servant I know that once a set of communications go into a certain line in any department it is difficult to extract oneself from that line.

Government departments are heavily pressurised into trying hard to get back what they might consider to be overpayments in benefits, and PC, ( I think that stands for Pension Credits ? ), are typical of this policy.

Once an investigation - rightly or wrongly - has been launched it can be extremely difficult to get out of that kind of a downward spiral unless some heavy guns are brought to bear.

Chris is dead right that they always respond well if a solicitor has either written to them on your behalf or he/she has helped you to get all your ducks in a row at any face-to-face enquiry.

It does seem rather unfair that one should have to go to such lengths to get fair treatment from a government office but as all government offices are massive and unwieldy machines they can and do make a lot of mistakes. ( Mistakes that they are never very willing to admit to ).

As Pension Credits are means-tested and the means-testing rules are incredibly complex it is unsurprising that such situations regularly occur. I guess anybody that finds themselves caught in that trap has to do all that needs to be done to get out of it as once that machine is in motion it will keep churning out letter after letter on the same subject until someone switches the machine off.

Best of luck to you in this respect in the future.

[wordswort]

Thanks Papaumau (not a Rivingtons fan, by any chance?)

I've not yet had the threatened phone call since I phoned the PC helpline to say Thursday's visit would not be possible ; and that hard-copy banking info was also unavailable because I have internet banking accounts.

I'm not unfamiliar with the unremitting zeal of gov. depts once they get their teeth into you.   I was on Job-Seekers' Allowance for a couple of years, moving to PC at the age of 63 when I finaly realized I was never going to get another job.

I'd had several beguiling pleas from the JSA people to move to Income Support, which later became PCredit, but ignored them all in the belief that I would eventually get a job. 

Before I moved to PC I got an unwarned visit from the Jobcentre investigator, who wanted to see all sorts of income/banking details, all of which I just happened to have easily to hand in those pre-internet banking days.   They later admitted that a communication from the taxman about my stakeholder pensions led them to believe I was receiving income from those pensions ; though had they looked into them they'd have realized I was not elegible to rceive such income until I was 65.

I do wonder, though, how others in my position cope : my background is similar to yours insofar as I became accustomed, over decades with contract negotiation and legal legislation, to being comfortable with bureaucracy, forms, rules, etc.

If this sort of thing gives me the heebie-jeebies, imagine how someone with a non-commercial background must cope?

wordswort

[Papaumau]

Yeah Wordswort, I think it is criminal how complex the benefits system is as due to this complexity many elderly folk never apply for what they are due.

I am sure that the treasury saves itself a fortune by ensuring that many people are afraid of the rules and regulations written into such applications. They have no reason to simplify it if it is going to cost them money.

Our friend Ivanhoe - here - has been asking that the means test be done away with completely as he has found that it costs more to administrate than it saves in the long run.

I take a more middle line as I feel that people that do not need benefits in order to lift them out of poverty should simply not get it. This means that some form of means testing has to be applied in order to do this. Having said that, if I was to re-design the means test I would make it so that it was easily understood and easily applied for so that those that need it would get it and those that didn't, wouldn't.

Oh and BTW....Yes, I am a fan of The Rivingtons. Well spotted.

The name that I use in all of my sojurns around the internet, "Papaumau" was originally taken from that silly song as I liked the sound of it. It was changed from "Papanui", ( which was a name that was given to me by a Maori buddy that I used to wrestle in Highland games competitions. It means  "Big Daddy" in Maori ). 

[Chrisjay]

Following on from this conversation according to today's press the benefits are going to be streamlined but not touching the state pension and associated benefits which broadly means it is not in their interest to bring us in line with other benefits which make people better off in work allowing them to keep between 60 & 65% of their benefits for a period of time.
Also there is the fiasco of someone declaring £12,000 pa salary while the company he owns pays him £240K in none salary allowances so he is entitled to family tax credit and does not have to pay the CSA for children of a previous relationship as if you are on FTC you are exempt from CSA payments.
Then of course it comes to the surplus benefits that pensioners do not claim (mainly because we do not know what they are or its so complicated to claim we don't) which amount to £4.3 BILLION now if my maths is right that equates to £350 approx for each of the 12 Million pensioners of this country - anyone know how we put in a claim for it?
Although they say pensioners will not be affected by the welfare cuts tell that to the pensioners of this forum who have already had their housing allowance cut by in some cases 60% and are facing eviction!

[Papaumau]

Yes Chris, that surplus in welfare benefits has been raised here before and while most of us admit that this is a lot of money, the past and present governments have not appeared willing to use this cash to help out the poverty-stricken pensioners in this country.

You have obviously studied this subject to be able to highlight those anomalies and even if they are correct - which I am sure they are - they just add to the suggestion that I have already made that the rules and regulations built around the benefits system in Britain is massively complicated and difficult even for the experts to understand. If the experts cannot truly understand it how can the unaware people who are hoping to claim it even start to understand it or push for the clarification of certain points.

It's a racket and as long as it stays so complex the civil servants that administrate it - and the governments that design it - will always have the upper hand.

[Chrisjay]

True but as long as pensioners remain apathetic and reluctant to join as one voice any government will be at liberty to get away with this abuse of our money and lets remember it is OUR money collected from past taxation and past and current VAT. 

There was a very popular song which started with one voice and grew into a huge choir called 'one voice' it is time we started thinking as one voice not dwelling on the rhetoric of past governmental parties and realise that come the next election there will be 16.5 million pensioners whose one voice will drown any lobby including the trade unions.

Lets warn this government if they have any hope of being re elected they need to listen, act and make what they do tamperproof if they wish to secure the pensioners vote.  If we start now we just may have the upper hand come election time.

I know I am new to this site but I have read posts back as far as they go and I am disappointed that the most consistant writers waffle a lot of rhetoric and do little to unite even this site let alone bring pensioners together with one common cause and that is to get justice for people reliant on the pathetic state pension.

I am working on a plan to do just this and I hope that the apathy shown and the people who observe in the background will actually get behind a plan and come together as a lobby group contacting and uniting other groups and individuals so the media come on board and when they do we will have a chance of applying some competent argument for the rights of pensioners to have a quality of life rather than a harsh existance.

End of soap box 

[Papaumau]

Being on a "soap box" is not a bad thing as the more people that speak out in this way the more the apathy - that certainly exists - will lessen.

Having said that, I think that you might be surprised just how "of one mind" the silver surfers amongst other pensioner-groups are and as we live longer and get more and more in numbers very soon we will produce a third of the electorate. The politicians know this already and they also know that they ignore us and our wishes at their peril.

I think that the main stumbling block to all of us getting our heads and hands together is because of the way we are fractured in our political support. Many of us here on the internet are  - like many other elderly groups -  are very set in our ways and find it difficult to leave a traditional political philosophy so as to be more effective in a broad church.

If only we were more militant and - as you called it - "of one voice", and mind, we would finish up being the most powerful political force in the country.

There is another website that exists and works towards this end that I own and administrate myself and this website welcomes such "soap-box" orators with open arms. Give it a visit by clicking on the big blue banner in my signature field and even if we both still continue to frequent this important site here it will do no harm to meet more like-minded people over there.

( The authorities in this website have allowed me to do this in order to bring at least two such entities together ).