Supplementary memorandum by Lancashire
County Council Welfare Rights Service (PC 08A)
The Pension Service are saying "now that
local partnerships are in place" which gives the impression
that there are now other places where people can go for advice
so that they do not need so many information points. What this
means in Lancashire is that premises for surgeries have been drastically
cut back without any replacements. For example, replacing five
or six a week "local" surgeries by just one central
surgery a week. This not only restricts the venues where pensioners
can get face to face advice but also makes it more difficult for
pensioners to comply with request for verification of documents
such as bank books and birth certificates.
We know that the "scans" are an inaccurate
way of identifying potential PC claimants, not least because they
cannot identify how much savings or private income a person has.
But what is worse is that because of the targets set for "scanning
work" the local service are cutting back on home visits to
people identified by our service as being in the hardest to reach
category with genuine claims.
Additionally, the local service are no longer
prepared to fill in Attendance Allowance and/or Carers Allowance
forms on home visit which means that those customers they do visit
will not end up with the full amount of PC or will be turned down
when their PC claim relies on being awarded the other benefit.
They may be doing "more" visits now,
I can't comment on that, but certainly some visits will be to
verify savings/income which people would in the past have taken
into a "local" surgery but now can't get into the one
central surgery which is left which might be miles away. Also
many of the visits from the scan work will have no chance of a
successful claim from the start. The Minister does not refer in
the extract of the letter we have been copied how many of these
scan prompted visits result on an award of PC but Pension service
staff speaking off the record to us say that it is very frustrating
work because so few scan visits lead to awards. We also understand
that the targets given to Pension Service staff relate only to
the number of contacts they are required to make not to the number
of awards.
James Dickson
January 2005
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