For Elizabeth Fletcher, from Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, the state pension is a lifeline.
The 90-year-old is among one in four pensioners who value it as their main source of income in retirement.
Crucially, Elizabeth’s £201-a-week state pension and pension credit payments also fund the fees for her new care home, which she moved into on January 15.
So when the government suddenly stopped all payments to Elizabeth just 11 days after she had moved in on January 26, her new life was thrown into chaos.
Over the next nine weeks, Elizabeth stopped receiving payments worth almost £2,000.
Lifesaver: Elizabeth Fletcher, 90, from Hemsworth, West Yorkshire (pictured with her daughter Wendy) uses her state pension to fund the costs of her care home.
And despite her daughter Wendy’s best efforts to find out why her mother was no longer receiving any state pension, she was unable to get any response from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Without the money, Wendy, 63, who lives nine miles away in Wakefield, says she feared her mother would be evicted from the residence.
Wendy says: ‘It’s been incredibly stressful. My mother is not very well and she cannot cope with the problem, so I have taken it on myself. But it seems impossible to contact the DWP for help.
“I’ve been pulling my hair out and doing everything I can.”
Wendy says she alerted the pensions department on January 26 that her mother was moving into a nursing home.
Until January, Elizabeth received a care allowance, which helps with additional expenses if she has a disability severe enough that she needs someone to help take care of her home. Wendy notified the DWP of her mother’s change of circumstances when she moved into the residence.
He expected his mother’s care allowance to end, but was surprised when state pension and pension credit payments were also immediately suspended.
“I tried to do everything by the book, but it’s been a nightmare,” Wendy says.
“The bills kept coming from the residence and I was worried she would be evicted for non-payment.”
Elizabeth, a mother and grandmother of five, was known as the Shirley Bassey of the North in her youth, when she sang in working men’s clubs.
He worked in various roles throughout his life, including hospital assistant.
Wendy says it became clear Elizabeth needed full-time care when she could no longer remember how to perform simple tasks, like making a cup of tea. Wendy believes her symptoms present as dementia.
Wendy, who worked in the police for more than 40 years, most recently as a community support police officer, has leukemia and took early retirement. She says the ordeal has taken a huge toll on her own physical and mental health.
The former official spent hours making calls to the pensions department, but despite her efforts, no one helped the payments resume.
After waiting an hour to speak to an official, Wendy says she was met with “rude, unhelpful and inexperienced” workers who couldn’t resolve the issue. On three occasions, the line was cut in the middle of a phone call.
Errors: In 2020, the Government admitted that it had made systematic errors in state pension calculations. In total, 237,000 older women were affected
She says: ‘They kept hanging up the phone. I don’t know if it’s because it became too complicated for them but the call would end abruptly.’
Every time the call ended, Wendy faced another hour-long wait to speak to another worker. Her frustration made her cry.
In March, desperate with fears that her mother would soon be evicted from the care home, Wendy contacted her local MP Simon Lightwood, who wrote to the DWP.
Nine weeks after payments stopped, Wendy was relieved to see £1,809.45 had been deposited into Elizabeth’s account. But she did not receive any letter or phone call to explain herself.
‘The money appeared one day. They have not given me any apology and have not told me why it happened,” she says.
When approached by Money Mail, the DWP confirmed payments would resume as normal.
A spokesperson says: ‘We have reinstated Ms Fletcher’s pension payments and issued arrears to cover the period of suspension. We regret any inconvenience caused.’
It is understood the payments were suspended due to an administrative error made by the pensions department.
Money Mail has seen cases in the past where state pension payments were incorrectly cut or suspended when the recipient reported a change in circumstances.
In one case, a widow’s state pension was cut following the death of her husband, while other suspensions were due to computer glitches.
In 2020, the Government admitted that it had made systematic errors in state pension calculations.
In total, 237,000 older women were affected. Estimates suggest they are owed almost £1.5bn in underpaid state pensions.
Last week, MPs wrote to the DWP expressing concern about yet another group of women who have potentially been paid insufficient state pensions.
Divorced women who reached state pension age before 2016 may have been defrauded if they mistakenly missed top-ups relating to their ex-husbands’ contributions.
Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister and partner at consultancy firm LCP who has been at the forefront of exposing underpayments, says the error in Elizabeth’s case was “unacceptable but not surprising”.
“The DWP operates on such a scale that the individual can get lost,” he says.
“One could imagine this type of situation happens all the time and will happen more and more frequently as more of us live longer and need care, so the DWP should have systems in place to make this seamless.”
- Have you had problems with your state pension? Write to j.beard@dailymail.co.uk
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