Elderly relative and benefits

vetfred

Hello, I hope someone can help with a couple of issues. I apologise in advance if some of my questions appear very basic but this is not an area I know much about.

One of my elderly relatives has just told me that she is worried about losing her benefits because of the amount of savings she will have the more she continues to pay credits/benefits into her bank account.

I have looked into it and the total of what she receives is this; her state pension, pension credit (guarantee credit and savings credit), and the higher rate attendance allowance. She has around £12,000 of savings in the bank.

Starting with the state pension, this is paid regardless of the level of her savings isn't it so it wouldn't matter if she had more savings?

Then with the attendance allowance, it says on the government's website that the attendance allowance is not usually affected by savings or income. The circumstances which could make it affected is not clear to me but I'm not sure if there is a limit as to how much savings you can have before this benefit is withdrawn?

Finally, with the pension credit, I can see from her documents that this definitely is related to her savings level as for every £500 above £6,000 threshold they say £1 becomes attributed to income thus the state pays you less the more savings you have using their formula of calculation.

At this point, all I can make out is that if, just for the purpose of an example, she had £50,000 of savings accumulated then it would just mean that her pension credit is the only affected benefit but she seems to believe that there is a savings level which, once hit, all benefits are stopped.

She also said she was going to give two family members some money (for totally unrelated reasons to her loss-of-benefits fear!) and I was unsure on how she stood doing that too. If she can give money to family members (not on benefits), then is there a maximum she can give and does that impact on her benefits? I thought it may look bad if she gave money away even if it was for the right reasons if it meant her savings would deplete and then the pension credit may be upped to give her more money from the state - or is that not an issue?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

healy

I can answer the Attendance Allowance part, this is a non means tested benefit and it does not matter how much she has in savings. It is paid because of her care needs and will not stop if her savings increase. Also her State Retirement Pension will not stop if her savings increase.

real1314

Ok, so on to the Pension Credit - both the Guarantee element and the Savings credit element are means tested, and the amount of saving would affetc this, however in the vast majority of cases these are set for fixed periods of around 5 years, on the basis that small annual increases in prvate incomes, and increased savings due to not spending benefit income, is not worth reviewing every year. YOu need to check when her review has been set for.
With regard to the savings limit which is normally £16k, that doesn't apply at all to Pension Credit, and if people get any guarantee credit element, it then doesn't apply to Housing benefit or council tax benefit in those circumstances. It does however apply to HB and CTB if they don't get guarantee element and just get the savings element.

vetfred

Thank you both very much for your help:)