The Department for Work and Pensions is snatching £3,000 away from state pensioners in a shocking failure, it has emerged. The DWP has left an 82-year-old British pensioner living in France an eye-watering £3,000 worse off.
The man saw the amount wiped from his pension after the DWP failed to inform him about crucial payment changes for eight years. Adrian Furnival discovered in 2018 that his Adult Dependency Increase (ADI) payments would be cut from 2020.
It left him more than £250 worse off each month, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found. The DWP had failed to properly communicate these changes to the 82-year-old, who should have been notified by the Government department in April 2010.
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The Bedford-born veteran learned about the impending pension cut through a routine annual statement from the DWP in 2018. Following the investigation, the Ombudsman recommended that the DWP issue an apology and pay him £675 in compensation for the injustice he experienced.
The PHSO emphasised the importance of Government bodies ensuring their communication with the public remains fair, clear, and consistent. Rebecca Hilsenrath, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, said: “Poor communication from Government departments damages trust in public services.”
She highlighted that the DWP “has a history of failing to communicate pension policy changes clearly and failing to learn from its mistakes.” “DWP has complied with our recommendations and will provide a comparable remedy to anyone who approaches them with a similar situation,” she added. “It came as a shock to me,” said Furnival.
“They sent the leaflet to us every year, so they could have told us at any point from 2010 onwards.” He went on and said: “The key issue for me is why I wasn’t told that my income would be going down by approximately £70 a week sooner.”
“We only have our pensions as income, so we were worried about what we were going to do to make ends meet,” he added.