Tens of thousands of pensioners are unlikely to receive their Winter Fuel Payments before the end of the year as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been grappling with a growing backlog of new claims for Pension Credit, analysis by BBC Verify suggests.
There has been a surge in applications for Pension Credit since Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in July that Winter Fuel Payments for this year would be mainly limited to those receiving Pension Credit.
There was a backlog of 90,000 unprocessed claims as of mid-November with around 9,000 being processed each week, according to the latest official figures. With a likely similar amount of new applications each week since then, there is a risk that there will still be a backlog of tens of thousands by the end of the year.
The DWP said it had deployed 500 additional staff to speed up processing.
Gary Jameson in Oxford applied for Pension Credit in early September, well in advance of his 66th birthday, so he wouldn’t lose out when his disability benefits stopped. But his birthday has been and gone and he has still not had a decision.
“I’m having to transfer money from my own private savings, which are not very much anyway,” he told BBC Verify.
He was originally told it would take six to 10 weeks to process his claim, “but I think with all the delays it will probably be months,” he added.
On 18 December, MPs are launching an inquiry into how changes to the Winter Fuel Payment are affecting pensioner poverty.
Before the chancellor’s announcement on 29 July, the average number of weekly applications in the UK for Pension Credit, where the government tops up a pensioner’s income, was 3,800. Since August, it’s been averaging around 9,400 following campaigns by the government and charities, encouraging people to claim.
Not all applications, once processed, are successful and get awarded Pension Credit – around 45% of applications processed since 29 July have been approved.
A government spokesperson said: “Over a million pensioners will still receive the Winter Fuel Payment, and our drive to boost Pension Credit take up has seen applications more than double with over 40,000 more pensioners now receiving it, as well as the Winter Fuel Payment.”
The Scottish government has announced that from late 2025 every Scottish pensioner household will receive a winter fuel payment.
The numbers in the UK at risk of delayed payments this year are uncertain because it depends on the rate at which DWP officials are working through the backlog.
The government has set 21 December as the deadline by which eligible people can apply for Pension Credit in time to receive the 2024-25 Winter Fuel Payment.
In 2022, only 63% of those eligible for Pension Credit are estimated by DWP to have claimed it. After the means-testing of the Winter Fuel Payment was announced in July, the government estimated its awareness campaign would push the take-up rate to 68% – equivalent to an additional 100,000 people. However, this would still leave roughly 780,000 eligible pensioners who would not be receiving either the Pension Credit or Winter Fuel Payment to which they are entitled because they have not applied.
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