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State pension: how to recover frozen payments
When I reached retirement age many years ago, I left the UK. I lived in Ireland for six months to fish and then another six months in Cyprus to enjoy the sun.
Without warning or notification of any kind, my state pension was suspended at the end of 2022. I wrote three letters to ask why and never received a reply.
I started to complain and another letter was ignored. The behaviour of the Department for Work and Pensions is extremely despicable towards me and to date I have written four letters and one email, all with no response.
My pension was suspended two years ago, in October of this year. Since then I have suffered two strokes and have not been able to claim my pension.
I am 87 years old, I am alone and I need someone to take the reins. Can you help me?
SCROLL DOWN TO FIND OUT HOW TO ASK STEVE HIS PENSION ISSUE
Steve Webb answers: I am very sorry to read that your pension was suspended over a year ago and that you have had so much difficulty in getting it back, especially given your poor health.
As you know, I have contacted the Department for Work and Pensions on your behalf and I understand that you will now be owed arrears of over £13,000.
But it may be of benefit to other readers if I explain what may have happened in your case and what they can do if it happens to them.
For background, of the nearly 13 million state pension payments made each week by the UK government, more than a million are paid to people living outside the UK.
As long as you are entitled to a UK state pension, you are entitled to receive it anywhere in the world (although with different rules on annual catch-ups in some countries).
Do you have a question for Steve Webb? Scroll down to find out how to contact him
It sounds like you have been receiving your pension for twenty years without any problems.
However, the DWP has the challenge of monitoring these payments and verifying that people are still alive.
While in the UK the DWP would usually be able to verify relatively easily whether someone has died, this is much more difficult when recipients are scattered around the world.
In response to this problem, the DWP (and other pension providers) may periodically send out ‘proof of life’ letters.
These require you to return a witnessed ‘certificate of life’ to ensure that the person to whom the state pension is being paid is still alive.
This is explained here: State pension if you retire abroad: Report a change in your circumstances.
In your case I assume what happened was that a letter was sent to an invalid address and you never received it.
From the DWP’s point of view, failure to respond to the letter would raise concerns that you were no longer alive, and they responded by suspending your payments.
They would reason that anyone still alive would quickly become aware of the suspension of their state pension payments and would quickly produce the necessary evidence so that their pension could be reinstated.
However, I have often heard people say that it can be difficult to communicate with the Pension Service from outside the UK, and this has clearly been their experience.
In principle, the entry route for people outside the UK should be as follows: International Pensions Centre.
However, the website says that “Responses to online enquiries are taking longer than usual,” and this may be a clue as to why you’ve had such a hard time getting a response.
An additional option could be for those who are British citizens to see if they can remain on the UK electoral register despite living part or all of the year outside the UK.
If you can do this, you will have a “local” MP in the UK who could help you escalate your case to the DWP.
More information on who is eligible and how to register is available here: Register to vote if you live abroad.
You told me that “it wasn’t so much the money, it was the idea of being swept away as if I didn’t exist, that really hurts.”
The DWP has attributed this to an administrative error and a spokesperson said: “We have apologised to your reader.
‘Your state pension has been reinstated and you have been paid any arrears for the period your state pension was suspended.’
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