It seems pensioners will be ‘Freezing This Christmas’ after the DWP failed on Pension Credit claims – the government department has a backlog of tens of thousands who may not receive their Winter Fuel Payment by December 25.
This is a shocking failure by Liz Kendall’s department after her colleague, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, justified the restriction of the payment to people who receive Pension Credit last August by saying 880,000 people who qualified for it did not claim it – and promised that they would receive the Winter Fuel Payment if they did.
And the announcement comes only two days after a parody song by Age UK – attacking prime minister Keir Starmer for targeting pensioners in order to balance the nation’s finances after the previous Tory government left them in a mess – hit Number One on the iTunes chart.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Figures revealed on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) that DWP failures to process claims mean a backlog of 90,000 has built up – so far. Around 9,000 are being processed each week, but with a similar amount of claims arriving each week, it seems clear that the government is failing to keep its promise that the most vulnerable pensioners would be protected.
According to the BBC,
The DWP has released data showing, external there were around 150,000 new applications for Pension Credit in the UK between 29 July and 17 November.
However, the Pensions Minister, Emma Reynolds, told Parliament on 4 December, external that the total number of unprocessed Pension Credit applications in the end of week commencing 18th November was 91,075.
Note the date. With an average of 9,400 applications per week since August, and 9,000 processed per week, we may safely add more than 1,000 more unprocessed applications to the figure.
Not all applications, once processed, are successful and get awarded Pension Credit – around 45% of applications processed since 29 July have been approved.
DWP data shows, external that in the week of 18 November, the average processing time for a Pension Credit application was 65 working days, or 13 weeks, up from 9 weeks at the end of July, external.
That average processing time, unless it has picked up, would mean eligible people who submitted an application in November or December would likely not receive their £200 to £300 Winter Fuel Payment – and backdated Pension Credit payment – until February or March 2025.
But the article also related stories of people who applied in February and started receiving the benefit in December, or in March and are yet to receive a decision.
This Writer would like to point out that Labour Party figures from 2017 suggested that if universal Winter Fuel Payments were withdrawn from pensioners, 4,000 would die – either of the cold or starvation because they would have to choose between heating and eating. That figure now seems ridiculously conservative and the UK is likely to experience mass deaths of senior citizens before the spring.
It seems appropriate also to point out that Labour’s big excuse for cutting universal Winter Fuel Payments was that pensions will be rising by four per cent, increasing the amount senior citizens receive by £460 per year – from next April, when the cold weather of winter is likely to be over. And in any case, we don’t know whether that increase will be overtaken by rising heating bills when the next winter arrives.
Also, let’s remember that Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was at the centre of her own heating scandal when it was revealed that she claimed £3,810 over 15 months to heat her £4 million, four-bedroom home. We don’t know how much she is claiming this year but a similar amount or more (what with higher energy prices) suggests a moral bankruptcy that I have previously described as “monumental”.
Finally: this is the Department for Work and Pensions. According to its rules, benefit claimants who fail to keep certain promises – to spend 35 hours a week looking for work if they are unemployed, for example – must pay forfeits that usually involve loss of benefits. Sadly, if this huge government department, with all the resources at its disposal (including, now, an extra 500 staff to process Pension Credit claims that must offend Reeves’s demand to slim down the civil service) fails to honour its own responsibilities, it has absolutely no responsibility to provide compensation.
What sanction do you think the DWP should pay for failing the the pensioners the government promised to protect?
What sanction do you think Liz Kendall should pay?
Personally, I would love to see her looking after a few pensioners in that lovely, heated mansion of hers. With four bedrooms, how many people do you think it could accommodate?
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Pensioners WILL be ‘Freezing This Christmas’ after the DWP failed on Pension Credit claims
It seems pensioners will be ‘Freezing This Christmas’ after the DWP failed on Pension Credit claims – the government department has a backlog of tens of thousands who may not receive their Winter Fuel Payment by December 25.
This is a shocking failure by Liz Kendall’s department after her colleague, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, justified the restriction of the payment to people who receive Pension Credit last August by saying 880,000 people who qualified for it did not claim it – and promised that they would receive the Winter Fuel Payment if they did.
And the announcement comes only two days after a parody song by Age UK – attacking prime minister Keir Starmer for targeting pensioners in order to balance the nation’s finances after the previous Tory government left them in a mess – hit Number One on the iTunes chart.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Figures revealed on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) that DWP failures to process claims mean a backlog of 90,000 has built up – so far. Around 9,000 are being processed each week, but with a similar amount of claims arriving each week, it seems clear that the government is failing to keep its promise that the most vulnerable pensioners would be protected.
According to the BBC,
Note the date. With an average of 9,400 applications per week since August, and 9,000 processed per week, we may safely add more than 1,000 more unprocessed applications to the figure.
But the article also related stories of people who applied in February and started receiving the benefit in December, or in March and are yet to receive a decision.
This Writer would like to point out that Labour Party figures from 2017 suggested that if universal Winter Fuel Payments were withdrawn from pensioners, 4,000 would die – either of the cold or starvation because they would have to choose between heating and eating. That figure now seems ridiculously conservative and the UK is likely to experience mass deaths of senior citizens before the spring.
It seems appropriate also to point out that Labour’s big excuse for cutting universal Winter Fuel Payments was that pensions will be rising by four per cent, increasing the amount senior citizens receive by £460 per year – from next April, when the cold weather of winter is likely to be over. And in any case, we don’t know whether that increase will be overtaken by rising heating bills when the next winter arrives.
Also, let’s remember that Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was at the centre of her own heating scandal when it was revealed that she claimed £3,810 over 15 months to heat her £4 million, four-bedroom home. We don’t know how much she is claiming this year but a similar amount or more (what with higher energy prices) suggests a moral bankruptcy that I have previously described as “monumental”.
Finally: this is the Department for Work and Pensions. According to its rules, benefit claimants who fail to keep certain promises – to spend 35 hours a week looking for work if they are unemployed, for example – must pay forfeits that usually involve loss of benefits. Sadly, if this huge government department, with all the resources at its disposal (including, now, an extra 500 staff to process Pension Credit claims that must offend Reeves’s demand to slim down the civil service) fails to honour its own responsibilities, it has absolutely no responsibility to provide compensation.
What sanction do you think the DWP should pay for failing the the pensioners the government promised to protect?
What sanction do you think Liz Kendall should pay?
Personally, I would love to see her looking after a few pensioners in that lovely, heated mansion of hers. With four bedrooms, how many people do you think it could accommodate?
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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