Dear LPG,

You only have to take a look at the internet to see lots of evidence supporting the fact that there are so many people in the UK who are entitled to benefits that they are not claiming, and many of those people are pensioners.  There are two main reasons that this happens as far as I can see.

Firstly so many pensioners are too proud to accept that they need a hand from the state while they forget that, thanks to the National Insurance Act 1911, they spent all their working lives paying into a fund to ensure that they had all the advantages of a minimum income during their older age, and now that they have arrived they feel such a benefit to be something that you only get if you are very poor.  But they forget to check just how poor the government thinks they are.

The second fact is that, the only way to find out if you are vaguely entitled involves your having to tell  a total  stranger all about your finances, and this is something that we have been brought up to keep to ourselves.    Most pensioners are worried about the stories they hear surrounding the many scammers that introduce themselves as financial advisors of some description before you tell them about everything you own, no matter if someone visits or telephones. 

The internet is now offering some online calculators which will at least help you to find out if you are anywhere near the financial threshold that would make the whole application process worth going through.

I have found some online benefit calculators that do require you to add personal information, but some of them allow you to remain relatively anonymous as long as you do the calculation in one go rather than starting it, then saving what you have done so that you can finish it later.  That is likely to involve your giving an email address. 

I know that LPG have mentioned them before but there is an organisation who you can phone anonymously if you have no one you want to trust to help you or are not comfortable using the internet.  The organisation is called Turn2us and their telephone number is 0808 802 2000.

DC, Camberwell

DC left some links to benefits calculators…

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