Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 3 December 2024 on Question 16304, how many pensioner households who are in receipt of Housing Benefit and who have been identified as being potentially entitled to, but not claiming, Pension Credit her Department has targeted in North Herefordshire constituency; and how many of (a) those pensioner households and (b) the 120,000 pensioner households directly targeted by her Department overall have since claimed Pension Credit.

151 pensioner households were targeted in the North Herefordshire constituency as part of the Invitation to Claim initiative. The letters sent to these households encourage them to claim Pension Credit by 21 December which is the latest date for making a successful backdated claim and still receive a Winter Fuel payment.

Data on the number of claims received from the households targeted as part of the initiative, and the number of awards made will be established once the Department has completed processing all those applications and the necessary analysis is completed.