council tax, rent and pension credits

heather_helo

hello all, right i apologist if this is in the wrong board but i do hope you can help - not for my sake but for my father in law.

he lives in rented accommodation in Plymouth, his army pension and state pension combined mean he is over the threshold for pension credits by £2 a week - this is per plymouth councils benefit department.

well my father in law is one of the sharpest people i know, and not trusting councils went and put in his income in to benefit checker from direct gov. and direct gov say he should get full pension credit.

So query is, anyone experienced this?
any ideas who i should be complaining to? father in law goes down once a week to council office takes a ticket and asks the staff to sort it out, hes also been to age concern (age uk) and they are baffled as-well.

non of the staff at the council can give him details of how there benefits are calculated, i.e how the benefit allowance is calculated compared to the government allowances, nor will they tell us what the government has told them to pay to its oap's claiming benefits.

hes going to see his Councillor this week to voice his concerns as the council have reduced his benefits by £95 a week (made up of rent benefit and council tax benefit)

At the mo any pension income over £150 p w is taxed at 65% of excess and Council is taxed by 45% of excess
as there both are calculated gross, father in law is taxed at 110%. This means he now end up with £135 per week.

now im not a wiz with benefits but surely if the government say you should get "x" amount sourly local council cant give you "y".

please give me some idea what im dealing with here,

thanks in advance

heather xx

megc_2

Basically your father in law needs to complete the application for pension credit and the DWP/ Pension Service will tell him whether or not he qualifies. It's assessed and awarded by the Pensions Service, not the local council and so the person on their info desk won't know the ins and outs of how it is assessed or be able to explain that to him. If he applies he will hear soon enough (my mother was awarded hers within 2 weeks only a week ago) and then he will know if he can qualify for any extra housing benefit etc.

anmarj

there are two elements of pension credit, guranteed and savings credit, for the guranteed element which is the passport benefit to full housing and council tax he need to have an income less than £132.60 per week to qualify, the savings credit element is an extra amount based on what is know as qualifing income, this is not a passport to full council and housing benefit but would be taken into account as income when working out what he is entitled to,

You may still get the Savings Credit even if the money you have coming in is up to about:

• £184 a week if you are single

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsandretirementplanning/PensionCredit/DG_10018692

there is a link to a pension credit estimater on the above if you do not want to ring to see if he is entited, but if is income is £135 per week (based on the state pension and works pension after tax only) then he will not qualify for the guaranteed element and would only get savings credit only

The Savings Credit can be up to:

• £20.52 a week if you are single

sleepless_saver

An alternative to using the calcuator is to simply phone the Pension Service and they will work out if he is entitled and how much he would get. As others have said, this is nothing to do with the council.

See this link to get the number to call which varies from one part of the country to another. It will help if he has his NI number to hand and accurate information about his income and savings.

If he does get pension credit, his housing benefit and council tax benefit would need to be reassessed anyway as his income would have changed. So it would make sense to get the pension credit sorted first.