4. Mrs R complains that DWP gave her incorrect information when it told her in 2012 she needed to be of pensionable age to be able to claim Bereavement Benefit.
5. She acted on this information, waiting until 2018 to make her claim, by which point, she was out of time to do so. This meant she was without the financial assistance the Benefit provides.
6. Mrs R wanted to receive the money she would have been entitled to had she applied in 2012.
7. Mrs R’s husband died in July 2012. A friend of hers suggested she claim Bereavement Benefit to help with funeral costs.
8. Between 2001 and 2017, DWP offered Bereavement Payment and Bereavement Allowance. Bereavement Payment was a one-off payment of £2,000 with Bereavement Allowance being a weekly payment for up to 52 weeks following the date of death.
9. On 31 October 2012 Mrs R says she called DWP’s Bereavement Office to enquire about benefits she might be able to claim. She says she was told she would need to call back once she reached pensionable age. She did this on 28 December 2018. DWP told her she was out of time and it was unable to backdate her claim.
10. Mrs R appealed DWP’s decision and attended a Tribunal hearing in January 2020. The judge upheld DWP’s decision that the claim was out of time, but explained that they found Mrs R to be believable. The judge asked DWP to consider Mrs R’s claim sympathetically.
11. DWP decided not to make any payment to Mrs R. After she complained, the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) considered the matter and concluded there was no evidence to support Mrs R having made a phone call in 2012. It did not uphold her complaint as a result.
13. When Mrs R says she contacted DWP in October 2012, Bereavement Benefit was made up of two parts: a Bereavement Payment and either Bereavement Allowance or Widowed Parents Allowance.
14. There is no dispute that Mrs R met the criteria for the benefit in question when she says she called in October 2012. The lump sum payment at that time was £2,000 and was a single rate all eligible claimants would receive. She would also have been eligible for a total of £5,545.65 in Bereavement Allowance over 52 weeks.
15. Mrs R’s account is that when she spoke to DWP in 2012, she was told she could not claim any benefit until she was of pensionable age. She therefore called DWP when she was approaching this point.
16. DWP said there is no evidence of her having called in 2012.
17. We accept that DWP has no record of the alleged 2012 call. Mrs R was not in receipt of any other benefit and therefore had no account with DWP. We know that if a claimant contacts DWP it will usually access their computerised account, and that this will leave a digital footprint. In this case there was no account for any note of the call, or footprint showing access to be recorded.
18. More than six years elapsed before Mrs R contacted DWP again. In the meantime, General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) had come into effect. This required companies to ensure they held data for no longer than was necessary. Because of this, and the length of time itself, it is not surprising that there were no call records from either Mrs R or DWP to show the 2012 call.
19. Mrs R was, however, able to provide some evidence of the call she says she made. She has provided us with the handwritten notes she recorded during that conversation. The content of these notes is in line with the information she says she received about having to call back when she was of pensionable age. In addition, she has noted the sums she was told she could receive when she did this, which match those DWP provided in its recent calculations. These sums have changed over time as the allowances changed. In other words, these appear to be contemporaneous notes.
20. The paper on which Mrs R made her notes was the back of a printed email. The email itself is dated October 2012, and the date the email was printed off is itself printed on the paper. This shows it was printed in October 2012, which again indicates that the notes were taken when she says they were. Taken together, we consider that there is compelling evidence that on balance, Mrs R called DWP when she says she did, and was told what she says she was told.
21. There is no dispute that Mrs R called DWP again in late 2018. This was when she was approaching pensionable age and tallies with what she says she was told to do. It seems unlikely she would have retained the information she noted six years before and waited that length of time to contact DWP to submit her claim if she had not been given this information as she says.
22. We showed DWP Mrs R’s evidence. It agrees that this constitutes evidence enough to show, on the balance of probabilities, that Mrs R did call in 2012. For this reason, it has agreed to pay Mrs R £7,545.65. This is made up of £2,000 Bereavement Payment and £5,545.65 Bereavement Allowance.
23. Mrs R has confirmed that she is in agreement, and very happy, with this outcome. We consider this is a reasonable and appropriate remedy to the complaint because it puts Mrs R back in the position she would have been in had DWP not given her incorrect information in 2012. This is what our Principles for Remedy say an organisation should endeavour to do.
24. We thank DWP for its reconsideration of its position in view of the evidence provided.
1. We have carefully considered Mrs R’s complaint about Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). We were sorry to hear about the difficulties she experienced in her attempts to obtain bereavement benefits. It is clear this has been upsetting and frustrating.
2. Having discussed the matter with DWP and given it the opportunity to review the evidence Mrs R has provided to support her position, it has agreed to pay her a Bereavement Payment of £2,000 and £5,545.65 in Bereavement Allowance.
3. We consider that this resolves the complaint and have closed our file.