Charity calls for new Pension Credit strategy to help more older people claim £3,500 income top-up

dailyrecord.co.uk:

New figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that in February 2023, there were 1.4 million people receiving Pension Credit, representing a total of 1.6 million beneficiaries including partners.

The data also indicated that nearly two-thirds (66%) of all Pension Credit claimants were women.The DWP has been running an ongoing Pension Credit uptake campaign since April 2022, encouraging an estimated 850,000 pensioners to check if they are eligible for the income top-up worth more than £3,500 each year.

The means-tested benefit also acts as a ‘passport’ to other support including help with housing costs, heating bills and Council Tax.However, the older people’s charity, Independent Age, is calling on the UK Government to implement a Pension Credit uptake strategy that is “targeted, focused and effective” after revealing that its helpline was “inundated with calls from frightened older people who were forced to make serious cut backs including not heating their homes and reducing the food they bought”.Commenting on the new statistics, Morgan Vine, Head of Policy and Influencing at Independent Age, said: “The new Pension Credit figures show that the number of people receiving the entitlement remained broadly flat between November 2022 and February 2023.

While we welcome the fact that 32,000 older people on low income started receiving Pension Credit during this three month period, we remain deeply concerned about the many thousands of people eligible for Pension Credit that continue to miss out.“This group, often, on desperately low incomes, are not receiving life changing sums of money they are owed - from the £3,500 or more directly through Pension Credit, to the potential for up to £8,000 more in