Personal pension pot for UC purposes

rbz
rbz Community member Posts: 122 Contributor
in Universal Credit (UC)

Recently received letter from UC Office. They wrote:

"For the purposes of Universal Credit, Personal Pension Schemes are treated as an Investment. This means the Personal Pension scheme that (person name) must be included in your total amount of Capital as an Investment…"

Please let me know this means if person have over £16 000 in Personal Pension pot - can't claim UC, because Savings/Investments are over £16 000 limit?

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Comments

  • OverlyAnxious
    OverlyAnxious Community member Posts: 3,412 Championing

    Hi,

    This is the first I've heard of it. Personal Pensions can't be accessed at working age so they were disregarded from the capital calculation on legacy ESA. As far as I'm aware, that is still the same for UC though I will try to find some confirmation now.

    If that's come from direct from UC though, that is a concern.

  • Emilee
    Emilee Community member Posts: 235 Empowering
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/125677/personal-pension-pot-for-uc-purposes

    Who is the letter from and was it uploaded to your journal? That is complete nonsense. Personal pensions schemes are ignored as savings, capital and investments. The legislation and guidance could not be clearer that they are ignored.

  • Jimm_Scope
    Jimm_Scope Posts: 5,410 Scope Online Community Specialist

    Hey @rbz, are you able to take a photo of the letter, remove/blank out any personal or identifiable details, and share it with us? As this would be quite a deviation from what we know currently.

  • Emilee
    Emilee Community member Posts: 235 Empowering
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/942652#Comment_942652

    Could you clarify the purpose of Rbz sharing the letter, and explain how this data will be used? Does Scope collect evidence of incorrect advice or letters?

  • Jimm_Scope
    Jimm_Scope Posts: 5,410 Scope Online Community Specialist
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/942658#Comment_942658

    I was hoping to confirm exactly what is being said, we have in the past had people misinterpret letters before. @rbz could also just give us the exact wording of the letter. If this is something that is happening I can raise awareness of it within Scope, this way more care will be given to capturing any other instances of this happening.

  • Emilee
    Emilee Community member Posts: 235 Empowering
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/942703#Comment_942703

    Thank you for explaining. I had taken the quoted portion of their message in quote marks to be a direct quote, so could not understand what else was needed.

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