The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
Use a food bank, DWP tells pensioner it failed to pay
Pensioners have been left in financial distress after a string of delays to state pension payments.
People turning 66, the state pension age, have waited months for their pension to be paid, despite making numerous calls to the Department for Work and Pensions to rectify the problem.
Guy Opperman, the pensions minister, admitted to Parliament this week that there were backlogs in initial state pension payments because of “staffing issues” during the pandemic. Normal service would not be resumed until the end of October, he said, although hundreds of additional staff had been brought on board to tackle the issue.
Sue Lockett, 68, said her sister had been reduced to tears after a DWP official told her she “wouldn’t starve” and there were “plenty of food banks around” while she waited for £1,590 in overdue payments.
Mrs Lockett, who acted on behalf of her sister Jean Walton, said no money had arrived in her account since her 66th birthday on June 30, even though she had helped her to apply for the state pension three months in advance to ensure there would be no problems. Mrs Walton failed to meet her rent payments following the delay.
“I told the DWP she had never been behind with her rent for the past 30 years and would be in arrears for the first time through no fault of her own,” Mrs Lockett said. “I told them she was struggling to pay her bills and food from her savings, which have now gone. One DWP assistant told me that she ‘ won’t starve as there are plenty of food banks nearby’. I was disgusted for them to even suggest that.”
Mrs Lockett said she had called the DWP every week in an attempt to find out what the problem was, but was never given an explanation. She said she was asked to give the same long set of details each time. “I’m ashamed to say that today, having gone through it all again with no luck, both my sister and
I got really upset with frustration and ended up sobbing into the phone.”
Mrs Lockett said on one occasion she was treated as though the DWP suspected she was a fraudster using someone else’s details to illegally access a pension. “I was crying on the phone because I was getting so frustrated but we got no sympathy,” she said.
After Telegraph Money contacted the DWP Mrs Walton was paid within one working day. It has since paid all the arrears. She is entitled to the full new state pension, worth £179.60 a week.
DWP said the delay had arisen when a staff member forgot to include an important claims form when emailing Mrs Walton in April. The missing document, called the BR1, is necessary for the DWP to accept a claim.
“We’ve looked into this and it looks like there was a delay in processing Mrs Walton’s claim. We’ve spoken with her to apologise,” a DWP spokesman said.
Steven Cameron of Aegon, a pension firm, said: “It isn’t appropriate to suggest that someone should rely on food banks while waiting for the state pension through no fault of their own. You’d hope the DWP would treat claimants with respect.”
Millions of women born in the 1950s had their state pension age pushed back from 60 to 65. The Government announced in 1995 that it would gradually increase women’s retirement age to bring it into line with men’s. Both sexes now retire at the same age.