Gran leaps to her death at quarry after pension error
A PROUD grandmother killed herself when a blunder by pension officials left her with just £5 to her name.
Joy Worrall, 81, refused to tell her family about her money worries and instead went to a quarry and jumped 40ft to her death.
She had threatened to end her life this way if she had major health or financial worries, her family said.
Following the tragedy her son Ben was sent the unpaid cash totalling £7,500. ‘That money basically paid for her funeral,’ he said last night.
Mrs Worrall was in good health and walked regularly near her home in Holywell, North Wales, an inquest heard yesterday.
In 2014 she called the Department of Work and Pensions to say she had received an inheritance but initially no changes were made to her payments.
The blunder came in July 2017 when a reassessment led to her entire pension being stopped instead of just the pension credits element. It is thought she did not contact officials to query this.
Mr Worrall, who lived near his mother, raised the alarm on November 21 last year when he discovered that she and her car were missing.
The following morning searchers found Mrs Worrall’s body at Rhesy-Cae quarry.
In a statement her 44-year- old son said her death had appeared a mystery until he contacted DWP officials. He said his mother had only £5 in her account on her death, having run through her £5,000 in savings.
In a letter to Mr Worrall, Suzanne Mitchelson, a DWP complaints resolution manager, said his mother’s basic pension should have continued. ‘I am sorry to say that due to an administrative error this did not happen,’ she wrote.
Recording a conclusion of suicide, John Gittins, coroner for North Wales East and Central, said it would be ‘inappropriate for me to comment further’ on the background to Mrs Worrall’s death.
Her son, who is an aerospace project manager, criticised the DWP after the hearing in Ruthin.
‘My mother was a proud woman who was simply left without any capital. I feel we have been let down by the DWP who have failed in their duty of care,’ he said.
‘It’s a disgrace how this can happen in modern society and what concerns me is that this could happen to someone else.
‘I’m distraught that I’ve lost my mother and my son’s lost his grandmother totally unnecessarily.’
He added: ‘All she had to do was say something to me or her best friend, but she didn’t like to discuss her finances with anyone.’
A DWP spokesman said: ‘We apologise unreservedly to Mrs Worrall’s family for the error that led to her pension payments being stopped.’
‘Left without any capital’