Pension Credit and disregards.

scottleag

I’ve received a letter this morning from the DWP’s  Pension Service B saying they need to check the information they have wrt pension credit is correct on September 29th. It says not to contact them as they will contact me by phone or letter “in the near future.”  My first query is whether they will do this before September 29th and try and estimate bank details on that date, whether it will be a call on September 29th itself or by letter or phone AFTER September 29th in which case I shall have to keep a record of the situation on Sep 29th. It’s bad luck anyway as the 1st of every month is the big ‘pay away’ day when several payments, including monthly rent, are due.

These are all matters of process. The big question concerns disregards. I asked on here about this some time ago and the advice received then was that certain payments were disregarded PERMANENTLY. In our case these would be cost of living payments, winter fuel payments, Christmas bonuses and housing support fund.

Our pension credit started three years ago so you can imagine these payments come to a substantial sum over the period we have been receiving pension credit. We are in receipt of all of the above with the exception of the cost of living payments which have now ended.

However if the only payments that are disregarded are those received within the past twelve months (the usual disregard period) then disregards are obviously a lot less than the sum accumulated over three years.

I was helpfully and very kindly given a series of links at the time of my previous query about disregards and having checked those links this morning they state:

Cost of living payments

“These payments are not taxable and do not affect the benefits or tax credits you get.”

Winter Fuel Allowance

“Any money you get will not affect your other benefits.”

Xmas Bonus

“It will not affect any other benefits you get.”

Household Support Fund

“If you get benefits, they will not be affected if you get a payment from a Household Support Fund scheme.”

I can see from this that REGULAR payments received aren’t affected by these ‘extra’ benefits but nothing that states they are disregarded PERMANENTLY. The wording reads quite ambiguously to me.

Does anyone know of anything hard and fast which states unequivocally this applies as permanent disregards or has anyone else been in this situation and is able to pass on any advice?

TIA

Edited purely for spelling and grammatical purposes.

ngr49er

My mum had the same letter last December for January 25th 2025 and again asking not to contact them.

That day has come and gone, never heard back, no letter / phone call and mum says she can't remeber the last time she was checked and I know it's before 2019.

As far as disregards go, from my understanding all Cost of Living payments received are disregarded indefinately (£1550 cumulative in mum's case), Winter Fuel Payment and Household Support Fund  (disregarded for 12 months from the date received and not indefinately, but I may be wrong) and her income (State Pension, Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance) disregarded in the assessment period received.

I assume the assessment period is the period between her pension credit payments.

Mum receives her state pension / pension credit weekly, so I assume her assessment period is weekly, but as that is difficult for me to calculate on her behalf so often. 

I do it every 4 weeks on the day she receives Attendance Allowance (as that is paid every 4 weeks) and if she gets anywhere near £10k I will go back and check the past 3 weeks as well just in case.

I don't disregard her Christmas Payment but instead assume it is income when paid, but as it is only £10, not too worried if it can or cannot be disregarded.

Hope this helps a little and with a bit of luck the 29th Sept will also come and go.

Edited for noticed spelling mistake

scottleag

ngr49er said:

My mum had the same letter last December for January 25th 2025 and again asking not to contact them.

That day has come and gone, never heard back, no letter / phone call and mum says she can't remeber the last time she was checked but it definately goes back before 2019.

As far as disregards go, from my understanding all Cost of Living payments received are disregarded indefinately (£1550 cumulative in mum's case), Winter Fuel Payment and Household Support Fund  (diregarded for 12 months from the date received and not indefinately, but may be wrong) and her income (State Pension, Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance) disregarded in the assessment period received.

I assume the assessment period is the period between her pension credit payments.

Mum receives her state pension / pension credit weekly, so I assume her assessment period is weekly, but as that is difficult for me to calculate on her behalf so often. 

I do it every 4 weeks on the day she receives Attendance Allowance (as that is paid every 4 weeks) and if she gets anywhere near £10k I will go back and check the past 3 weeks as well just in case.

I don't disregard her Christmas Payment but instead assume it is income when paid, but as it is only £10 not too worried if it can or cannot be disregarded.

Hope this helps a little and with a bit of luck the 29th Sept will also come and go.

Thank you for this. We've not had any checks before (though I did write to them in Dec 2023 informing them we were about to go over the limit when back payments reached the end of the disregarded period) but I assume someone will be in touch at some stage as the Sep 29th date isn't random, it marks three years to the day since we started to receive pension credit. CoL permanently disregarded is very good news. For the others I'll have to speak with them when (if) they call or write. The only other correspondence we had with them was in Feb 2024 when we were sent a form to fill in which included a handwritten inquiry about when we reached £10K in savings. That was filled in and returned the same day. We heard nothing more and when I phoned up about a month later I was told our response had been received and was on the desk of a case manager. That was it. Subsequent calls were met with a 'don't worry, we'll get back to you when we need to' response. Nothing more at all until now.

That doesn't stop my wife from worrying though and as she has a serious illness the last thing she needs is more worry. She thinks they wouldn't be writing to us after all this time unless there's something wrong and she's concerned there'll be an overpayment for the last three years to be repaid. I've tried to re-assure her we've done everything right and have copies of correspondence sent and dates of phone calls made. In a way I hope they DO get in touch soon as it would help put her mind at ease. 

Robbie64

@scottleag, it's likely that 29 September 2025 was set as a review date when Pension Credit was put into payment. At one time, when benefit (not just Pension Credit but other means tested benefits too) was put into payment, a review date would be set for a future date and would be set using the date from when the benefit was first paid. Perhaps that still happens and possibly for your claim, a three year review date was set.

scottleag

Robbie64 said:

@scottleag, it's likely that 29 September 2025 was set as a review date when Pension Credit was put into payment. At one time, when benefit (not just Pension Credit but other means tested benefits too) was put into payment, a review date would be set for a future date and would be set using the date from when the benefit was first paid. Perhaps that still happens and possibly for your claim, a three year review date was set.

Thank you. That makes sense except for them writing to me in Feb 2024 after I'd told them I was just about to go over the savings limit, 

peteuk

ngr49er said:

As far as disregards go, from my understanding all Cost of Living payments received are disregarded indefinately (£1550 cumulative in mum's case), Winter Fuel Payment and Household Support Fund  (disregarded for 12 months from the date received and not indefinately, but I may be wrong) and her income (State Pension, Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance) disregarded in the assessment period received.

If your received £1550 in COL payments and can prove you still have it eg you savings never dropped below £1550 then you can claim this as a disregard.  If you received it and spent it eg your savings dropped to zero but now you have £8K you cant claim that the COL payments should be disregarded.

ngr49er

scottleag said:

ngr49er said:

My mum had the same letter last December for January 25th 2025 and again asking not to contact them.

That day has come and gone, never heard back, no letter / phone call and mum says she can't remeber the last time she was checked but it definately goes back before 2019.

As far as disregards go, from my understanding all Cost of Living payments received are disregarded indefinately (£1550 cumulative in mum's case), Winter Fuel Payment and Household Support Fund  (diregarded for 12 months from the date received and not indefinately, but may be wrong) and her income (State Pension, Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance) disregarded in the assessment period received.

I assume the assessment period is the period between her pension credit payments.

Mum receives her state pension / pension credit weekly, so I assume her assessment period is weekly, but as that is difficult for me to calculate on her behalf so often. 

I do it every 4 weeks on the day she receives Attendance Allowance (as that is paid every 4 weeks) and if she gets anywhere near £10k I will go back and check the past 3 weeks as well just in case.

I don't disregard her Christmas Payment but instead assume it is income when paid, but as it is only £10 not too worried if it can or cannot be disregarded.

Hope this helps a little and with a bit of luck the 29th Sept will also come and go.

Thank you for this. We've not had any checks before (though I did write to them in Dec 2023 informing them we were about to go over the limit when back payments reached the end of the disregarded period) but I assume someone will be in touch at some stage as the Sep 29th date isn't random, it marks three years to the day since we started to receive pension credit. CoL permanently disregarded is very good news. For the others I'll have to speak with them when (if) they call or write. The only other correspondence we had with them was in Feb 2024 when we were sent a form to fill in which included a handwritten inquiry about when we reached £10K in savings. That was filled in and returned the same day. We heard nothing more and when I phoned up about a month later I was told our response had been received and was on the desk of a case manager. That was it. Subsequent calls were met with a 'don't worry, we'll get back to you when we need to' response. Nothing more at all until now.

That doesn't stop my wife from worrying though and as she has a serious illness the last thing she needs is more worry. She thinks they wouldn't be writing to us after all this time unless there's something wrong and she's concerned there'll be an overpayment for the last three years to be repaid. I've tried to re-assure her we've done everything right and have copies of correspondence sent and dates of phone calls made. In a way I hope they DO get in touch soon as it would help put her mind at ease. 

Glad it helped a little.

Just remember that if the DWP does contact you, don't assume that the person  you speak to is aware of all the rules themselves regarding disregards and can easily give duff information.

You probally will also need to get bank statements for all the months that COL payments were received, as evidence for COL cumulative disregard.

scottleag

ngr49er said:

Glad it helped a little.

Just remember that if the DWP does contact you, don't assume that the person  you speak to is aware of all the rules themselves regarding disregards and can easily give duff information.

You probally will also need to get bank statements for all the months that COL payments were received, as evidence for COL cumulative disregard.

Thanks for this. Yes, I assumed I'd have to go through everything if someone calls and add the information separately if I receive a form letter. That'll be six bank statements for COL and eleven if WFA, Xmas & HSF are included. I'm presuming I can redact everything else bar payments and maybe balance as I don't see what business it is of the DWP to see how much e.g. Sainsbury's deliveries have cost.

ngr49er

scottleag said:

ngr49er said:

Glad it helped a little.

Just remember that if the DWP does contact you, don't assume that the person  you speak to is aware of all the rules themselves regarding disregards and can easily give duff information.

You probally will also need to get bank statements for all the months that COL payments were received, as evidence for COL cumulative disregard.

Thanks for this. Yes, I assumed I'd have to go through everything if someone calls and add the information separately if I receive a form letter. That'll be six bank statements for COL and eleven if WFA, Xmas & HSF are included. I'm presuming I can redact everything else bar payments and maybe balance as I don't see what business it is of the DWP to see how much e.g. Sainsbury's deliveries have cost.

I recently had a UC review and uploaded the monthly statements for all COL payments, though with pension credit I believe it may still be via mail.

Not sure if they will have an issue with redacted statements or not, guessing though that as you are only confirming the actual COL payments, they hopefully will not.

As far as WFA, Xmas and HSF, I'd only worry about them statements if you're getting near or over 10K in capital.

What they will most likely also ask for are the past 4 months of bank statements for all accounts held (including paypal), even if there is £0 in the account.

They will not want any of those redacted, as they are checking where the money is being spent.

Plus they'll want statements of any other capital you may have e.g. shares, premium bonds etc.

At least this is what they wanted from me recently regarding UC.