Today I had cause to ring the Pension Service (SP). I had noticed on my bank statements that my £130, that the government says is the mininum that one can live on in this country, for the last 7 weekly payments, had been registered as being paid by the (PC) Pension Credits.
My state pension is a little over £119 and my pension credits, to make this amount up is just over £10. Being worried that my pension, for the 2nd time had been messed up I rang only to find that my pension and pension credits had been combined with no notification to me.
Now you may think, does it matter, I am still getting the same amount wherever the money is coming from, but, and the chap on the phone agreed with me. 1) These payments should be shown as 2 seperate payments. 2) if I decided to get a little job, meaning I would naturally lose my pension credits, it could cause bother when my pension went back to the SP paying it again. 3) Many times for various things, one is asked to show a bank statement. How could I possibly show how much pension I was getting as apposed to pension credits. Not only that, but do I really want it to look, on the surface at least, that I hadn’t earned my state pension and was purely living off of pension credits. I think not.
I have now left it with the chap I spoke to, to sort out.
On a good note though, I have received a cold weather payments 2 weeks in a row from the pension service. A cold weather payment = £25 and is paid out if the temperature drops below zero for 7 days in a row.
