There is no logical reason for all those who have not claimed PC. The DWP know all about the pensioners they pay the state pension to, so they also know who is entitled to PC and should pay it automatically without the pensioner jumping through hoops.
All this baloney about not claiming, when it would be easy for the DWP to automatically pay PC, but obviously they do not want to🤬
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It can be pride driven, or just unawareness.
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. .
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Shame on the BBC for trying to demonise pensioners in this way!!!
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It’s no more that I expect from the modern-day BBC. Now is the time to defund that once reliable institution 
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Surely its very easy to find lots of retired people who are reasonably comfortable on the combination of state pension and private pension(s)? If you were on about the average salary all your working life and contribution to a private pension scheme then that should be adding something like £10-15k to the state pension. So for a couple with only one partner having had a private pension the joint private & state pension will be about £35k a year. Not a fortune but enough to not need the fuel allowance. And that is at least half of all retired households. See quite easy to find and representative of a lot of people.
Plus this does not take account of savings or possible gains from property (most likely with this retired generation).
Surely this means the BBC article is quite representative of at least half of retirees?
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Surely it would also be very easy to find lots of retired people who are not “reasonably comfortable”. Many worked in low paid jobs which didn’t allow for payment into a private pension, or building up a savings pot, not all were able to buy their own home and lived in social housing so no gains from sale of property. See it would have been easy for the BBC to present a more balanced report.
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That’s true but surely the people who you describe would, with means testing, qualify for continuing to get the fuel allowance … ?
Not necessarily, the cap is so low that many will be a just above it. Also I know people who attempted to apply for Pension Credit but found the application to be so long and complicated that they gave up. Yes I know there are organisations who could help completing the application but they are now so busy there is a long waiting list for help
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Blimey Lincs… 
What planet are you on?
I consider myself fairly well off and I don’t make half that a year…Most pensioners I know don’t even get enough income to put them in the tax bracket…£12,500 per annum…
Even with my works pension I’m only just eligible to pay tax…
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I don’t know any of the pensioners who the BBC refer to, I bet they all live down south or in France… 
I did a quick google and found that the average male private pension pot if £228k - which would give an annual income of about £13k. The state pension for a couple is £22k, Add the two together.
Now obviously half of retirees have a smaller, or even no, private pension pot. Equally, on the other side of average, many will have considerably more.
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What next? The dog ate my homework? Report from June confirming that labour hadn’t costed its own manifesto :
But delivering genuine change will almost certainly also require putting actual resources on the table. And Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this.
** Labour continues in a conspiracy of silence on the difficulties they would face. These challenges are already perfectly clear. The books are open. A post-election routine of shock-and-horror at the state of the public finances will not cut it.**
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Fair point. Does that imply the problem is not means testing for the allowance but the mechanism and threshold for qualifying is the issue?
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I lost a third of my pension pot when Gordon Brown in the last Labour government made changes to private pension tax relief in 1997. I retired in 2005 aged 68 on a much lower private pension. I worked all my life on fairly low wages. With my state pension I am just over the tax limit.
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I think pensioners who get £35K per year are the exception rather than the rule Lincs. Especially around here…There are more workers than managers, and lots of out of work miners and engineers.
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| Age | Average pension pot |
|---|---|
| 16-24 | £2,700 |
| 25-34 | £9,300 |
| 35-44 | £30,000 |
| 45-54 | £75,500 |
| 55-64 | £107,300 |
Here is what I found - below. Average means that half of people are above these numbers and have are below. The £35k number was for a couple, not for one person.
I had originally quoted Disraeli in my post but then thought it would get my account suspended (again) so have removed it
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