Sally-Ann Hart, the MP for Hastings and Rye, has welcomed a new government campaign to boost the take up of Pension Credit locally as part of wider support aimed at helping people with the cost of living.
Pension Credit is a top up for the most vulnerable pensioners that is worth an average of £3,300. As well as a cash top up to the state pension, it is a passport to a suite of other benefits such as help with housing costs, council tax reduction schemes, heating bills and a free over-75s TV licence. There are already 3,583 claimants of Pension Credit in Hastings and Rye, but we know that around 25 percent of people who could claim the extra help do not currently do so.
To improve this situation, the government has now launched a major campaign to encourage eligible pensioners, as well as those who care for and support older people, to access the help they are entitled too. The pensions minister, Guy Opperman, has written to local newspapers across the country and the Department for Work and Pensions will send leaflets to 11 million pensioners. A high-profile media day will also take place on June 15 2022.
Pension Credit can be claimed online, by telephone or by post. Information is available on the gov.uk website or by calling the Freephone Pension Credit claim line on 0800 99 1234.
Commenting on the campaign, Sally-Ann said: “It is great news that over 3,500 pensioners in Hastings and Rye already claim Pension Credit, but it is more important now than ever for everyone else locally to claim the help they are rightly entitled to.
“That is why the government have launched a major campaign to encourage eligible pensioners to claim it, and I will continue to do all that I can do to ensure people know what support is available to them and how to access it.”
Source: Sally-Ann Hart press release
Image Credits: Chris Lawson .
I wonder if the next encyclical might inform us of our MP’s views on ‘Wine Time Friday’? (An infelicitous accident that the abbreviation is, “WTF”?)
Personally, I’d also like to know whether Mrs Hart agrees with agnostic Conservative colleagues, like Tobias Ellwood, or continues to support her party leader? (Or ‘parties leader’…)
I expect there are other questions constituents would like to ask too. Given Rye News’s relationship with Mrs Hart, and her ongoing desire to address us, might it be possible to advance the idea of an open online forum with our MP? A regular piece where constituents can ask, publicly, the questions we’d actually like answers to?