Advice Column – Dec 2025
Another genuine case from Sudbury and South Suffolk Citizens Advice
The client and her husband, both pensioners and living in their owner property with nearly £9000 in savings, contacted Sudbury Citizens Advice for some advice about inheritance tax. The adviser provided them with the information they had requested, however before ending the contact the adviser asked the client if they were in receipt of pension credit. The purpose of this question was because the Government estimates that there are over 700,000 pensioners in the UK with an entitlement to claim pension credit but have not done so.
The client gladly replied to the question on pension credit by answering that “yes” the two of them were claiming pension credit of £18 a week. The adviser, being aware that the husband of the client was in receipt of a disability benefit, suspected that the amount of pension credit the couple were receiving weekly was not correct. With the couple’s agreement the adviser carried out a thorough pension credit calculation, which only took 5 minutes.
The results were astonishing. The pension credit re-calculation revealed that the couple could be entitled to pension credit of over £62 a week and that the extra value could be backdated 3 months. This resulted in an increase of over £2,500 in the first year of pension credit.
Why? you may ask. Well, the client’s husband started to receive his disability benefit some 3 years previous, and it is the addition of the disability benefit that gave them the entitlement to the increase in pension credit. Sadly the couple had not informed the pension service of the “change in circumstances” at the time and it was to the adviser’s regret that the increased entitlement could only be backdated 3 months.
Do you have an entitlement to pension credit? Are you receiving pension credit but may be entitled to an increase? The answers to these questions are simply obtained. Call the Sudbury Citizens Advice on 01787 321400, you can leave a message 24 hours every day. An adviser will call you back.
Sudbury Citizens Advice offers everyone within the Babergh local authority area a free and confidential service. Can you afford not to make the call?
We are only a phone call away!