Pension Credit and State Retirement Pensions

(asked on 14th May 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many pensioners in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England (i) receive the basic state pension, (ii) receive pension credit and (iii) are eligible for pension credit but do not claim it; and what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all pensioners receive their full entitlement to pension credit.


Answered by
Paul Maynard Portrait
Paul Maynard
This question was answered on 17th May 2024

Caseload statistics are routinely published and made publicly available via DWP Stat-xplore. The figures below show the Pension Credit and Basic State Pension caseloads in each area:

Pension Credit

Basic State Pension

Coventry North East Constituency

2,873

10,083

Coventry

7,168

33,981

North West

131,692

773,219

England

1,160,826

7,190,718

The latest available Pension Credit take-up statistics cover the financial year 2021 to 2022 and are available at: Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). These statistics are only available at Great Britain level and cannot be broken down to smaller geographical areas.

We continue to promote Pension Credit through our national awareness campaign, which has been ongoing since April 2022 and has included advertising on national TV, newspapers, broadcast radio, on social media and via internet search engines as well as on screens in Post Offices and GP surgeries.

At the start of 2024 - as in previous years - the DWP wrote to over 11 million pensioners as part of the annual State Pension up-rating exercise. The accompanying leaflet included prominent messaging promoting Pension Credit using the 'call to action' messaging from the communication campaign, including how Pension Credit opens the door to other financial help such as housing costs, Council Tax and heating bills.

There is a strong indication that the campaign has had a positive impact. The latest available figures covering the 3 months to November 2023 show that there were over 28 thousand more households in receipt the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit than in May 2022.

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