How long are people waiting for Pension Credits?

mrsyardbroom

I'm just wondering how long other people have had to wait to have a pension credit claim dealt with. A lady from the DWP completed the form and checked all my documents. She told me it would take two weeks. After two weeks I rang up and the pension credit office said it takes seven weeks. After seven weeks I rang up and the pension credit office said it would probably take another two weeks. That's nine weeks altogether. Has anyone else had to wait for so long?

calcotti

There have been many anecdotal reports of long delays for Pension Credit over the last six months or so. Used to be very efficient but seem to have had a meltdown.

whizzywoo

I applied one month in advance of getting my State Retirement Pension. That was at the beginning of April this year.

It was another 17 weeks before the claim was decided and I received any Pension Credits.

A lady from the DWP came to check some paperwork a couple of weeks after the initial telephone claim.

I started to ring the Pension Credit phoneline after a further 8 weeks had passed. I continued to chase it up every 2 weeks until eventually I made a complaint about the abysmal service I had received. This complaint was made over the phone with the lady taking down all the details.

Every time I rang to enquire about my claim I was promised a callback within 10 days. The callbacks never happened.

The grounds for my complaint were that I had not been kept informed nor had my claim been dealt with in a timely manner. Both of these things had broken the DWP Charter.

I was promised a reply to the complaint within 3 weeks but I have not received one so far.

However approximately 10 days after I made the complaint I received a backdated payment of Pension Credit into my bank. A few days later the decision letter arrived.

My next step would have been to ask my MP to look into the delay. That avenue won't be available now until after the General Election is over.

From what I have heard from different sources the Pension Credit dept is overwhelmed with work and it has now become normal for claims to take several months.

Robbie64

The Pension Service are taking ages to deal with Pensioin Credit claims. I've read reports that it's taking up to 4 months to deal with outstanding work. My suggestion is to phone them up again, it may move you up the queue.


The backlog is largely down to people making claims ahead of the free TV licence being abolished next year for people aged 75+ who aren't in receipt of Pension Credit. There have been thousands of PC claims which has caused an already slow system to grind to a halt. As the poster above wrote, make a complaint. Unfortunately it's not possible to contact an MP at the moment as we don't have any due to the forthcoming General Election!

p00hsticks

Robbie64 wrote: »

The backlog is largely down to people making claims ahead of the free TV licence being abolished next year for people aged 75+ who aren't in receipt of Pension Credit. There have been thousands of PC claims which has caused an already slow system to grind to a halt. As the poster above wrote, make a complaint. Unfortunately it's not possible to contact an MP at the moment as we don't have any due to the forthcoming General Election!

Also I think there was a big increase in claims earlier this year in advance of the new ' mixed age couple' changes.

mrsyardbroom

I was hoping to get some help with installing a storage heater. No chance of that this winter by the sounds of it. I've been told to ring back in two weeks. I'm not sure what good that will do if they're swamped with work. I hope they're getting some overtime in before Christmas.