Pension Credit
(asked on 3rd March 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much pension credit was unclaimed in (a) Houghton and Sunderland South constituency, (b) the North East of England and (c) the UK in each of the last three years.
It is important to highlight that in 2017/18 there were around 1.7 million Pension Credit claimants, amounting to around £5.1 billion of Pension Credit payments. The Government is committed to making sure that all pensioners eligible can claim the Pension Credit to which they are rightly entitled.
The information requested on the amount of Pension Credit which remains unclaimed in (a) Houghton and Sunderland South, (b) the North East of England and (c) the UK, is only available at the Great Britain level. Below are the figures on the amount of unclaimed Pension Credit within Great Britain over the past 3 years of data available.
Year | Estimated Amount Unclaimed (Millions of Pounds) | Range (Millions of Pounds) |
2017/18 | 2,160 | 1,840 - 2,500 |
2016/17 | 2,850 | 2,440 - 3,300 |
2015/16 | 2,720 | 2,330 - 3,140 |
*Methodological refinements have been applied to the data for 2016/17 and 2017/18. Therefore, comparisons to previous years should be treated with caution.
Official statistics on the take-up of income-related benefits at Great Britain level, including Pension Credit, can be found in the ‘Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up in 2017 to 2018’ publication. Which was published on 27th February 2020.