Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an estimate of the number of pension credit claims received between January and November (a) 2024 and (b) 2023.

In 2024 we have received approx. 206,000 claims up to and including week commencing 16 Sept 2024, this figure includes data published by the Department on the 27 of Sept 2024. The Department has announced it will publish updated Pension Credit application and award statistics on 28 November 2024. Releases will be quarterly, including Pension Credit application, clearance, and award/non-award volumes data from 1 April 2024, up to the most recent data available before each publication. The previous publication can be found here: Weekly Pension Credit claims received from 1 April 2024 to 22 September 2024 - GOV.UK

In 2023 for the same period, we received 201,000 claims, with an additional 22,000 claims made after this period and up to the end of October 2023.

Please Note:

• The figures presented have been collected for internal departmental use only and have not been quality assured to the same extent as Official Statistics

• Intakes have been rounded to the nearest 1000

• Data for 2023 is from two different sources, data from Jan 23 to end of March 23 and data from Apr 23 onwards

• Methodology changes for intakes from 03.04.2023, impacting quality of data for 2023