Pension Credit

Add up all your income - state and occupational pensions, certain social security benefits but not things like DLA or AA. Add £1 per week for every £500 over £10000.. If you are single and the figure you arrive at is less than £155.60 a week ( or £237.55 if a couple) then the amount of pension credit will be the difference ie the top up. In addition, there is then an automatic entitlement to free dental, HB, help with council tax, glasses, cold weather payment and maybe some other local things - I think the OP mentioned free courses. This us true for people who reached state pension age on or after 5 April 2016. If you reached SPA before that date, and have some savings, there is also the possibility of an additional sum called Savings Credit which us a max of £13.07 for a single person and £14.75 for a couple. But either way, the example given by the OP cannot be true if everyone is being honest

Norah - it's important not to muddle up IHT gifting and gifting to make yourself eligible for benefits. If the latter, and it's discovered, you will be treated as if you still had the money and as MOnica says, the people you gave it to can just keep it if they wish. Risk you take for cheating. If you lie about savings and don't declare your second home ( and all this remains in your name) your heirs will be well and truly stuffed when you die and they go to probate because the probate office will cross check your benefit history and DWP will demand payment of any overpaid benefit.

These kind of stories circulate and make it sound as if the benefit system is easy to defraud. It is theft, straight and simple and theft out of my pocket as a tax payer. I would prefer that my money went on an NHS operation or paid for a teacher in a school. I expect these wonderful people also grumble about waiting times at the hospital and the state of the roads without it even dawning on them that they are part of the reason. I had a relative like that, always cheating the tax man, working for cash, going bankrupt and leaving small businesses in the lurch, etc. and the git used to moan about the government and wasting tax payers money, oh the irony.

Rigby46 GillT57 I merely posted what happens often. Money is gifted away, homes are gifted away, possessions are gifted away. And yes, it happens for many reasons, inheritance being one, benefits is another reason. I assume the gifting is not to outsiders, merely family. But to act as if it's not prevalent is being rather ostrich like, in my opinion.

The holiday home is a static caravan, sorry I should have said. My DH is 63 and was told that as well as his 'free bus pass' he was entitled to claim Pension Credit. We have no income other than his small works pension, so I looked into PC but as we have savings (we saved to retire early) we not entitled to any thing and thats fine, I would rather have the security of money in the bank than to 'have' to rely on benefits, but I had just given my son my car as his packed up and he was stuck and we had decided we no longer needed 2 cars, but It did make me feel a bit greedy and thought blinking heck, if I buy myself a nice new car and so does my hubby, shove a conservatory on the house and buy a caravan at the seaside, we would have less money in the bank and be entitled to PC and I thought I bet thats what some people do.

KK surely your husband is not entitled to pension credit not because of his savings but that at 63 he's not yet of state pensionable age? I'm not an expert on these things, maybe others know better.

Apparently the entitlement comes at equivalence to female SPA age.

....and current female SPA is around 64. It reaches equality with men (65) in 2018.

A static caravan is an asset with a sales value, so its value would be taken into account when calculating PC.

I think there is less fraud among older people than all the stories and myths floating around. I worked as a Home visitor with a charity for older people for 10 years and saw 100s of older people. In that time and I came across few cases where there was any attempt at fraud or evasion,but most were very minor.

Local Authorities and the Pension Agencies are not fools. They have access to all Inland Revenue records so are able to check what interest is being paid to people and I had several clients who 'forgot' about savings accounts and investments and then got a nasty shock a year later when they were asked to pay benefit back because they had been paid too much or had no entitlement.

The LAs will also ask whether the client owned a house and when it was transferred/gifted and they can also do checks with the Land Registry to get details of ownership and any changes in ownership (and how much a house was sold for). If you remain in a house after you have gifted it to someone else you must pay the market rent, and prove it, otherwise the LA will assess you as if you still owned the home.

I once had a client who had gifted his house, quite legally, to his children 15 years previously and had duly paid rent - except that house values and rents in his area had increased far faster than average and he ended up with the monthly rent exceeding his quite large monthly pension.

Katy - it's really important to be accurate when discussing entitlement to benefits. It is not true that having savings means you are not entitled to PC. That sounds misleading. What is true is that if your husbands work pension( which you say is your only income) is less than £237.55 per week, then you add to that pension the 'assumed' income of £1 a week per £500 over £10000 - if those two together take you over £237.55 then of course you are not entitled to any PC but there is in law no upper savings limit although common sense tells us that the higher the savings, the less likely you are to be eligible for PC in income grounds. Say your husbands pension was £200 a week, you could have savings of only £28,500 before you were not entitled to PC.

Norah - sorry if I wasn't clear about benefit fraud - I've no idea what the rates are among people claiming PC but of course there will be some. I was trying to make the point that people so often criticise what they see as an over generous benefits system when in fact what may be happening is that people are receiving benefits they are not entitled to. The OP made it sound that you could just buy a holiday home and reduce your savings to claim PC when the law, Ie what is legal, says no you can't.

pension credit is based on income and not what property or savings you have
if this is the case I wonder why H could not claim it when he was made redundant at 60 and his only income was a private pension that didn't amount to much.

Your assets and savings ARE taken into account when you apply for pension credit . It is for very poor pensioners only and usually a very small top up - mine is £18 weekly to top up my basic state pension . When you apply you have to fill in a very searching form which asks you about bank accounts and all details as they now have the power to access your accounts , also any property you own, including second homes etc. If these people are claiming PC and have a second home etc they are committing benefit fraud .

Some people much prefer to believe that benefits are incredibly generous as it feeds into the right wing agenda of benefit cuts. As f77 demonstrates, PC tops up inadequate pensions and only to the level of the figures quoted above. OP if you do believe what you've told us, report them to the DWP. You can do it anonymously - your OP made it sound that you thought that what you think they've done was allowed under the rules - it's not as several of us have made clear either through personal experience or you know finding out the facts from reputable sources.

They even asked me for proof of my husbands death, I explained they had paid me widows pension! Few days later a letter arrived asking for his address , I gave them the address of the cemetery . The questions go on and on, no way is it easy to claim

Annie !!

Anya, to pay widows pension for all that time then I reach sixty and they want proof of his death , gave it and then they ask for his address , all the questions , all the forms , little wonder it is said there are people who qualify for assistance but don't apply, I think they just give up

Annie, that was so insensitive, common sense doesn't seem to come into it. Our first ever experience of benefits was when my son had a bad accident and shattered his leg, he was newly married with a mortgage and just stat sick pay and unhelpful employer. I told him he needed to claim some help (he had worked from leaving college). He applied for benefits and recieved a letter and a cheque for a 1 off payment of 15p. He was not entitled to anything as they worked it out on his previous years earnings. Bonkers, luckily he had mortgage protection (he was off work 6 months) and working Mum and Dad (us) to support him.