The Pension, Disability and Carers Service

Business Plan

2008-2009

Contents

Foreword

I am delighted to present to you the first Business Plan for the Pension, Disability and Carers Service, which came into being on 1 April 2008. The creation of the new Agency is a key part of the overall ambition of our parent Department, the Department for Work and Pensions, to become an exemplar of service delivery to both individuals and employers.

As part of that ambition, one of the main aims of the Department is to provide a better, more joined–up and efficient service for our customers. Both The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service are rightly proud of the levels of customer satisfaction and service they have achieved. The formation of our new agency will undoubtedly present opportunities to build on their track records.

The agency has many challenges ahead as the resources available to it continue to reduce. I am nevertheless confident having previously established and led the Disability and Carers Service and more recently The Pension Service that the knowledge, commitment and experience of our staff will continue to deliver great things for and on behalf of our customers and tax payers.

We already have ambitious plans which we inherit from the predecessor agencies for improving the way we serve our customers. These will continue apace as we increasingly build the delivery of our services around the needs of individual customers and not the pension or benefits we provide. This is very exciting for both customers and staff alike.

For the immediate future the establishment of the new agency will be largely invisible to our customers as we continue to operate with both our Pension Service and Disability and Carers Service brands. Over time, however, we aim to bring greater visibility to our new agency with its own brand and identity but only when we are clear that we are offering something even more special than the former Pension Service and Disability Carers Service.

We remain committed to continuing the investment made to date in the professional development of our people by giving them the training and personal development they need to enable them to deliver the best possible service for our customers.

The next few years will no doubt see the agency play a key role in the on-going development of the welfare system. Our priorities over the next three years will be to deliver and support the Departmental Strategic Objectives which are summarised later, and specifically for the new agency to:

implement the reform of State Pension to make it fairer and more widely available, ensuring it provides a more solid foundation on which people can save;

ensure an accurate, speedy and joined-up service based around customer need to enable the customer to be dealt with at the first point of contact wherever appropriate;

improve value for money for the taxpayer;

reduce levels of fraud and error;

transform pension centres into fully operational contact centres with significantly improved use of telephony, IT and electronic document management;

reduce costs and improve customer service to disabled people by making more efficient use of Local Service and Alternative Offices; and

continue to better support our decision makers and improve the quality of decisions for disabled customers through revised and simpler claim forms and new updated medical guidance.

This plan sets out our priorities for 2008-2009 together with our performance standards. It will evolve further as the new agency develops.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to our people. They have faced many challenges over the last few years and achieved remarkable things. We ask even more as we move into another period of our evolution; I know that I couldn’t wish to do it with a more committed workforce.

Terry Moran CB

Chief Executive

Our organisation

The Pension, Disability and Carers Service is a new executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions. Our customers comprise current and future pensioners, disabled people of all ages and carers. We work closely with Jobcentre Plus and other organisations across the UK with whom we share customers.

The agency will support the Department’s aim ‘to promote opportunity and independence for all’ and will have a vision, shaped by the Departmental Strategic Objectives that puts our customers at the heart of our business. The key Departmental Strategic Objectives that will determine our success over the next few years are to:

promote independence and well-being in later life, continuing to tackle pensioner poverty and implementing pension reform;

promote equality of opportunity for disabled people;

pay our customers the right benefits at the right time; and

make Department for Work and Pensions an exemplar of effective service delivery to individuals and employers.

Further information about Departmental Strategic Objectives can be found in the Department for Work and Pensions Three Year Plan 2008-2011.

Our Ministers also depend on us to:

protect the most vulnerable customers by taking a holistic approach to their greater well-being (for example sign-posting customers to other benefits, help or entitlements that are not within the scope of the agency);

raise awareness to customers of all our benefits and entitlements to maximise benefit take-up; and

be effective and efficient in meeting our performance standards by delivering value for money.

The targets and other priorities set out in this Business Plan demonstrate how the agency will meet these objectives.

What we do

We currently employ around 16,500 people to deliver pensions, benefits, forecasts and entitlements to approximately 15 million customers in Great Britain and abroad.

We deliver: State Pension Additional State Pension Pension Credit Over 80 Pension Winter Fuel Payments Christmas Bonus Payments Pensions Forecasts Pension Traces Disability Living Allowance Attendance Allowance Carer’s Allowance Vaccine Damage Payments

Did you know that? We deliver around £85 billion in benefits and entitlements every year; We act on the feedback we receive from our customers by conducting an annual survey and maintaining an active dialogue with representative groups such as Help the Aged, Age Concern, Mind, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and many other organisations; We have simplified the claims process for pensioners, for example, a customer can initiate a claim for Pension Credit, State Pension, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit with a single phone call; Every year we deliver Winter Fuel Payments to over 99.9 per cent of eligible customers by the end of December and as a result over 12.3 million customers received their payment before Christmas last year; There are over 10 million disabled people in Britain including 700,000 children.

We are proud of what we continue to achieve. Every working day the agency: processes 10,500 new claims for our pensions, benefits and other entitlements; answers nearly 45,000 telephone calls enquiring about pensions; sees 2,600 customers face to face; issues 1,300 pension forecasts; completes over 200 pension traces; and receives nearly 19,000 calls to the Disability Living Allowance /Attendance Allowance Helpline.

Our Values

Our values guide everything we do and we share these with all of our colleagues in Department for Work and Pensions. The following examples demonstrate our values in action.

Achieving the best Warrington Pension Centre in Cheshire, was awarded the “Louder than Words” Charter mark by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (18 July 2007) meeting all 10 standards required. The auditors extended thanks to all of our staff, finding them to be most helpful, welcoming and obviously keen to offer deaf and hard of hearing people a good quality of service.

Respecting people “Our Helpline staff are an enormous credit to the Department. This is not an easy job to do and the customers who ring the Helpline often have quite complex issues or problems that they are trying to resolve. Overwhelmingly I heard people dealing with them with professionalism, courtesy, and above all, kindness. They are a credit to the Department and the Civil Service.” Leigh Lewis – Permanent Secretary Department for Work and Pensions , following his Back to the Floor experience on the Disability Living Allowance /Attendance Allowance Helpline.

Making a difference The Customer and Acquisition Directorate of the Pension Service scooped the Innovation and Progress Award in the Guardian Public Services Awards. The award acknowledged the innovation that has gone into transforming the Directorate's services. This includes setting up partnerships with local authorities to create 203 joint teams, a visiting programme for over one million customers and new processes to improve data gathering so services can be better targeted. The changes have had a definite impact and demonstrate a strong commercial focus and improving cost effectiveness. The Pension Service has managed over one million referrals over the past year. There has also been a letter of commendation from the former Secretary of State, Peter Hain, who praised Customer and Acquisition Directorates efforts in "making a real difference to the lives of our customers".

Looking outwards Due to excellent ongoing liaison with their local authority, a Pension Credit liaison officer has been able to identify and assist 25 customers who are affected by their nursing home closing. The customers’ age range is from 79 to 103 and all are moving into individual flats. The officer arranged for all the residents to receive a visit from Local Services to complete change of circumstances documents and assess their entitlements prior to the homes closure. Potential new entitlement to Pension Credit for up to 12 customers was identified and also Attendance Allowance. Housing Benefit and Council Tax benefit forms were also completed. The Pension Credit liaison officer coordinated all of the action on these customers' claims - ensuring minimum distress for our customers at a time of great upheaval and disruption in their lives.

Our customers

We have nearly 15 million customers, some of whom are the most vulnerable in society. Everything we do in the organisation is focused on being there for them and providing excellent customer service. They depend on us to:

deliver a large range of pensions, benefits and entitlements accurately to people of all ages;

provide information to future pensioners to enable them to make informed decisions about their pension provision in later life; and

be respectful, responsive and reliable in the way we operate.

Creating the Pension, Disability and Carers Service provides the opportunity to build on the strong relationships already in place with our customers by

listening to them and learning from them, making sure that they can access our service and their full entitlements in ways that suit their individual requirements - ensuring the customer need only tell us once, and making excellent customer service an integral part of all our new processes.

For the immediate future our customers will not be affected by our organisational change and will continue to contact The Pension Service and the Disability and Carers Service as they have always done.

For customers who are pensioners and future pensioners in 2008-2009 we will:

maximise take-up of Pension Credit;

begin the implementation of the State Pension Reform;

improve customer service to all customers by making better use of the local service and alternative offices;

focus on payment accuracy and speed of benefit payment;

implement a programme of continuous improvement using Lean techniques by making the customer the focus of our business design;

continue to work closely with external groups who have knowledge of the issues and needs of our customers;

and our disabled customers and carers can expect:

to have their claim dealt with more quickly;

in relation to Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance , to receive a clear, written explanation of any decision that we make;

to begin to benefit from changes we are making to the way we deal with changes of circumstance and fixed period awards in Disability Living Allowance /Attendance Allowance cases;

to benefit from improvements we have made to how we deal with Carers Allowance claims;

to speak with a skilled advisor the first time they dial one of our numbers and in relation to Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance ,to speak with the Decision Maker handling their claim;

that we will work in partnership with Jobcentre Plus to continue to identify and implement ways of improving information exchange between the agencies with a view to increasing the number of disabled customers able to work; and

for all customers we have a new performance standard for telephony for 2008-2009:

To have at least 93 per cent of calls answered by an advisor with less than 1 per cent receiving an engaged tone.

We will monitor and report our progress against a series of performance standards agreed with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. These will help us and our key stakeholders ensure we deliver our objectives and cover the areas in standards of service that matter most to customers and taxpayers. These are set out on page 17.

Security of customer data

Keeping what our customers say to us confidential and their data secure is an absolute priority. The Data Protection Act and Social Security legislation places specific requirements on the handling and use of personal and other official information and we will use secure arrangements to transmit such data. Customer information is only shared with other organisations where specific legislative gateways permit this.

Getting to know our customers

Community 5000 is an initiative started by the Disability and Carers Service and adopted by the Department to help get to know our customers better and understand their needs. Each year our people are given the opportunity to meet customers and here are some stories of their experience:

Phil Wynn Owen, Strategy and Pensions Director General, spent a day with members of the Alzheimer’s Society at a flagship day centre for people with mild to intermediate Alzheimer’s and related conditions. He spent the day talking to people with Alzheimer’s and helping staff run a whole range of activities for them.

Shortly after his Community 5000 experience Phil met with the Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society and told him his experiences with Community 5000 gave him a better insight into the objectives of the Society and the needs of people with Alzheimer’s.

Phil says “It really was a pleasure to spend a day getting to know the friendly users of the centre and a privilege to work with the dedicated staff.”

Pear Tree school is a day care school for children with special needs such as autism; the children are from a wide age range. “I found the whole experience very rewarding, working with the children in the garden highlighted the different needs each child has and how committed the teachers and carers have to be. It definitely gave me a better insight and understanding into the difficulties they face and will enable me to apply this knowledge when making decisions”. Lynne Formby, Disability and Carers Processing Unit

St. Catherine’s residential care home Sutton Coldfield. “I sat with a 90-year-old resident named Ray and spoke with him for about one hour. We talked about why he is in the home and how he copes and passes the time as well as about his youth when he used to be a mountaineer and an author amongst many other things. Later on in the morning me and my colleague Yakoob acted as quizmasters for an hour which was one of the activities the home arranged daily to keep the residents’ minds active and get them all involved feel the experience was very useful especially observing the residents various mobility problems, bearing in mind the ages ranged from early seventies to one resident who was, I believe, 102! They also had varying degrees of cognitive impairment. It was useful to be shown the aids and appliances used such as banana boards and hoists often mentioned in claim packs.” Thomas Flaherty Midlands Disability Benefits Centre

“Community 5000 is a great scheme; we take and value all the help we can get. The staff who come here really want to help and contribute and it shows. It also gives us a better insight into Department for Work and Pensions and the services it provides, which means we can pass this information on to those that may need help.”

Pauline Evans and Ian McEwen, volunteers at the Salvation Army, Bridge Project

Our People

Our People Strategy will enable the Pension, Disability and Carers Service to attract, retain and develop the right people with the right skills and motivation to deliver our mission.

The Strategy will set out how we will support our people to deliver business change to enhance the customer experience, provide a coherent overview of all people activities and link these with Departmental and cross governmental initiatives.

This will help to create a clear line of sight between people activities and business outcomes and ensure that we engage and support our people in a practical and consistent way.

In 2008-2009 we will:

develop our leadership capability so that our leaders can engage more effectively with our people - helping them to develop, perform and change to meet the requirements of the new organisation and its customers;

engage our people in helping us build our vision and provide a better customer service;

improve individual and team contribution through coaching, the delivery of modern learning solutions focused on building capability and effective performance management tools;

provide clearly defined job roles and career pathways that are supported by effective leadership and learning, to enable our people to improve their performance throughout their career;

build a new organisational structure around the needs of our customers whilst respecting our people’s work life balance;

reward achievement though accreditation and recognition;

identify and invest in the development of those with clear potential to become future senior leaders through our talent management programmes;

deliver our diversity action plans to ensure an inclusive environment where our people have equality of opportunity; and

continue to improve the working environment through the delivery of our health, safety and well-being plans.

We have a new Performance Standard for sickness absence for 2008-2009:

We aim to reduce staff sickness absence to less than 8.2 average working days lost.

Efficiency Challenge

The Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 settlement (which covers the years April 2008- March 2011) imposes greater demands than ever before in the way we manage our business. Taxpayers and citizens rightly have high expectations of public services delivering value for money.

With a further reduction in financial allocation of five per cent for each of the three years coupled with increasing expectations of customers, it is essential to maximise efficiency and respond to the challenge to deliver our service without levels of customer service being adversely affected.

In 2008-2009 resources will be allocated broadly as in 2007-2008.This will ensure that, as we respond to the efficiency challenge, we do not undo the significant progress made in the past three years of the previous Spending Review.

The Pension, Disability and Carers Service will become a more efficient business, employing fewer staff whilst delivering a substantially improved service. Programme expenditure will be better managed through improved processes, more structured decision-making, and in the case of disability benefits, greater consistency of awards.

Providing value for money to Parliament and the tax payer

Funding

In 2008-2009 the total funding for administering benefits and entitlements to our customers is £804 million. The charts below show how these funds will be distributed. Figure 1 shows how funding will be allocated between paybill, estates, technology and other. Figure 2 shows operating and investment costs.

Forecast Benefit and Entitlement expenditure for 2008-2009

By deploying these resources, we will be able to deliver benefits and entitlements to our customers of over £85 billion in 2008-2009 to the quality expected as per the targets agreed with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Tackling Fraud and Error

A new target has been introduced across the department this year to prevent and detect overpayments and underpayments of benefit consistent with the Department’s aspiration for the proportion of expenditure overpaid and underpaid due to fraud and error. To achieve this:

We will undertake throughout the year, specified checks and other actions designed to prevent and detect fraud and correcting fraud and error in a minimum of 50,600 cases as a result.

Staffing profile

During 2008-2009 we plan to reduce our staffing numbers by about 1,000 from 16,550 at 1 April 2008 to 15,550 by 31 March 2009.

Estate

As our workforce reduces we will continuously review our estate requirement.

Suppliers

We are planning significant savings from key areas from business travel to printing and stationery supplies. We will be working with our key suppliers to negotiate better value and also promote a cost-conscious culture across the business from technology to business travel.

Governance and Risk Management

We comply with the Department for Work and Pensions governance principles by planning, managing and controlling the business effectively. The key risks we will manage this year are expected to be unidentified funding pressures, insufficient investment funding for Pension Transformation, the impact of the European Court of Justice decision on the exportability of disability benefits and despite investment, failing to design new ways of working that are efficient and effective enough.

Changing the way we do business

The Pensions Transformation Programme is ambitious, being one of the largest programmes ever undertaken in Europe. It aims to modernise and significantly improve the quality of service to customers, whilst driving out reductions in our cost base.

The Disability and Carers Service Business Design and Change Directorate also has a transformation programme for disabled customers and carers. It puts the customer at the heart of the way our processes, people and partners work. The changes we plan to make, are central to our ability to deliver the more accessible and personalised customer service we aspire to, whilst meeting our resource constraints. We will work closer with our Department for Work and Pensions Partners as well as other Government Departments and customer representative groups to achieve this.

During 2008-2009, we will work closely with Ministers and Departmental policy-makers to continue welfare policy reform.

Implementing State Pension Reform

The Government is making a landmark reform of the UK pensions system and the Pension, Disability and Carers Service is at the forefront in making the changes necessary to deliver a radically different state pension outcome for future pensioners.

The Pensions Act 2007, which received Royal Assent in July 2007, will make the State Pension fairer and more widely available whilst also ensuring it provides a more solid foundation on which people can save. Over 6 million people reaching State Pension age in the initial ten years from April 2010 will be affected and change on this scale represents a significant challenge for he Pension, Disability and Carers Service.

Changes will need to be made to all Pension Service products and services, including Pension Credit, Basic State Pension, State Second Pension, Winter Fuel and State Pension Forecasting Services. This will involve amending 24 Department for Work and Pensions Information Technology systems and three belonging to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

To deliver such a wide commitment promptly, consistently and in the most cost effective and customer focused manner, our Pensions Reform Delivery Programme continues to:

design, develop and implement State Pensions Reform on an incremental basis in order to spread the load and risk to the day-to-day business;

provide the Pension, Disability and Carers Service contribution to the Extended Working Lives agenda; and

reflect other Pension Reforms, for example Personal Accounts, in Pension, Disability and Carers Service products and services where necessary.

The majority of the changes do not take place until April 2010 or later.

Finally, we will also collaborate across the Department on a wide-ranging programme of change designed to:

make it easier for customers to deal with changes in their life circumstances;

improve the way we share customer information efficiently and securely in the Department for Work and Pensions ;

extend self-service for customers;

make it easier for customers to contact us; and

continue our process efficiency drive.

While changes are not planned to be implemented during the year, this work represents an important part of ambitions for the future.

Corporate responsibilities

Diversity and Equality

The Disability, Race and Gender Equality Schemes set out arrangements for meeting legislative requirements. Since the Scheme was launched in 2006, good progress has been made in improving accessibility of services and increasing the understanding of the diverse needs of staff and customers. The Action Plans reflect the involvement of customers and staff to help determine what the priorities should be. Customers want staff to fully understand their disabilities, not to underestimate their problems and to gather information without bias. They have told us to “carry on with the good work you started”. In keeping with our commitment to delivering a better quality experience for our customers we aim to:

Continue improving our accessibility and commit to the customer service standards;

Promote positive attitudes to disabled people;

Improve the reasonable adjustment process; and

Remove barriers that exist for customers whose first language is not English.

Staff have told us we need to keep raising awareness of all diversity issues and to understand the issues affecting our people and we will:

Promote local staff diversity focus groups to improve staff engagement in diversity & equality;

Develop our diversity co-ordinator to support the business in promoting awareness of all diversity issues;

Continue to improve the reasonable adjustment process for our staff with disabilities; and

Provide an environment in which all employees feel comfortable to raise and discuss diversity and equality issues.

Sustainable Development

We support the government’s sustainable development aims by applying the principles of sustainable development and embedding them into our business.

In 2008-2009 our priorities are to:

review energy / efficiency ;

implement the ‘Do you need to travel initiative?’;

reduce the cost and impact of travel;

introduce travel plans;

reduce the size of energy consumption levels and costs;

reduce carbon emissions from offices and business travel and improving energy efficiency;

baseline and monitoring process; and

install recycling facilities – plastic.

Performance Standards

Performance Standards for pension’ customers
To deliver an annualised value of new successful Pension Credit applications of £767 million and to secure at least 250,000 successful new Pension Credit applications.
Achieve an accuracy rate of 92 per cent on new claims and changes of circumstances to Pension Credit
Achieve an accuracy rate of 98 per cent on new claims and changes of circumstances to State Pension
Clear new applications to Pension Credit within an average of 15 working days
Clear at least 95 per cent of new claims to State Pension within 60 days

Performance Standards for disabled people and carers
The number of Disability Living Allowance/Attendance Allowance cases referred to the Tribunal Service to be no more than 4.5 per cent
Achieve 82 per cent of customers satisfied with the service they receive* **
Clear new claims for Disability Living Allowance within 38 day
Clear new claims for Attendance Allowance within 16 days
Clear new claims for Carer’s Allowance within 13.5 days
Reduce the costs of processing benefits to £34.35
Achieve an accuracy rate of 94 per cent on decisions on claims for Disability Living Allowance
Achieve an accuracy rate of 94 per cent on decisions on claims for Attendance Allowance
Achieve a financial accuracy rate of 98 per cent for Carer’s Allowance

* The 08/09 customer satisfaction survey will focus on customers of the former Disability and Carers Service. The target of 82 per cent will relate to the former Agency and not all the customers of the Pension, Disability and Carers Service.

**Disability and Carers Service had adopted the same methodology for establishing a base for customer satisfaction since 2004 whilst continuing to review the structure of the MORI poll. 2007 provided the opportunity to expand the scope of the annual survey to better represent the cases where benefit is disallowed. From 04/05 to 07/08 the results of the survey are comparable. For 07/08 an additional figure for the revised baseline will also be provided that will be used for target and comparison purposes for 08/09.

Joint Performance Standards for the Pension, Disability and Carers Service
To have less than 1 per cent of calls receiving an engaged tone
To have at least 93 per cent of calls answered by an advisor
We aim to reduce staff sickness absence to less than 8.2 average working days lost
We will undertake throughout the year, specified checks and other actions designed to prevent and detect fraud and correcting fraud and error in a minimum of 50,600 cases as a result

If you need to get in touch or want more information…

Terry Moran CB

Chief Executive

The Pension, Disability and Carers Service,

Room 204,

Richmond House,

79 Whitehall,

London SW1A 2NS

Telephone Number: 020 7829 3012

Fax:	020 7829 3107

e-mail:	terry.moran1@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Annex -1

Our Executive Management Team Structure

Terry Moran CB	Chief Executive Officer
Vivian Hopkins	Chief Operating Officer
Stuart McKinnon – Evans	Finance Director
Sarah Scullion	Human Resources Director
Martin Bellamy	Change and Transformation Director
Nigel Richardson	Customer and Partnership Director
Peter Lowe	Informations System /Information Technology Director
Jason Feeney	Strategy Director
Non – Executive Directors
John de Trafford	Chair of the Board
Willy Roe	Deputy Chair of the Board
Peter Lemann
Jane Tozer
Kate Nash

Annex – 2 Useful Contact Numbers, Internet Sites and other contacts

Service	Contact
Benefit Enquiry Line – For general advice and information about benefits for people with disabilities, their representatives and carers or if you want this plan in other formats i.e. Welsh, Large print, Easy-read, Braille, Audio CD	Freephone 0800 882200 Text Phone 0800 243355
Pension Credit Application Line – For Customers who wish to make an application For Pension Credit.	Freephone 0800 99 1234 Textphone 0800 169 0133
Pension Centres – Dealing with pensions product information and queries.	Local Rate 0845 60 60 265 Text phone 0845 60 60 285 www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/contact
Pensions Direct - Dealing with changes of circumstances and enquiries from customers who have their pension paid straight into a bank or building society account.	Local Rate 0845 301 3011 Textphone 0845 301 3012 www.adviceline.co.uk/pensions
State Pension Claims Line - For customers wanting to claim State Pension.	Local Rate 0845 300 1084 Textphone 0845 300 2086
State Pension Forecasting Team - Dealing with forecasts for State Pension.	Local Rate 0845 300 0168 Textphone 0845 300 0169 By Post Future Pensions Centre, The Pension Service, Tyneview Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE98 1BA www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/planningahead/useful-contacts.asp
The Pension Tracing Service – Can help locate old pensions even if you are not sure of the details.	Local Rate 0845 6002 537 Text phone 0845 3000 169 By letter: Pension Tracing Service, The Pension Service, Tyneview Park, Whitley Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE98 1BA www.thepensionservice.gov.uk
Winter Fuel Payment Helpline - For information about Winter Fuel Payments for people aged 60 or over living in Great Britain or Northern Ireland.	Local Rate 0845 9 151515 Textphone 0845 601 5613 www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/winterfuel/helpline.asp
Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance Helpline – Advice and updates on Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance claims and payments.	Local Rate 0845 7 123456 Textphone 0845 7 22 44 33 Email: DCPU.Customer-service@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Carer’s Allowance Unit – Advice and updates on Carer’s Allowance claims and payments.	Local Rate 01253 856123 Text Phone 01772 899489
Veterans Agency - Helpline for general enquiries about War Disablement and War Widows Pensions and all aspects of War Pensions.	Freephone 0800 169 22 77 Textphone 0800 169 6758 Customers based overseas +441253 866043 Fax 01253 330561 Email: help@veteransagency.gsi.gov.uk
Welsh Language line – For Welsh speaking customers living in Wales.	Local Rate 0845 60 60 275 Textphone 0845 60 60 295
International Pension Centre - Advice on claiming and receiving pension and medical cover for those who live, or have previously lived overseas.	Local Rate 0191 218 77 77 Textphone 0191 218 7280 Fax 0191 218 7381 The International Pension Centre, Tyneview Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE98 1BA, United Kingdom www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/ipc/home
Call charges Calls to 0800 numbers are free from BT land lines and phone boxes but you may have to pay if you use another phone company, a mobile phone or if you are calling from abroad. Calls from mobile phones can cost up to 40p per minute, so check the cost of calls with your service provider. From 1 August 2000, calls to 0845 numbers from BT land lines should cost no more than 4p per minute with a 6p call set up charge. You may have to pay more if you use another phone company or a mobile phone, or if you are calling from abroad. Calls from mobile phones can cost up to 40p per minute, so check the cost of calls with your service provider. Calls to 0870 numbers from BT landlines should cost no more than 8p per minute with a 6p call set up charge. You may have to pay more if you use another phone company or a mobile phone, or if you are calling from abroad. Textphones Where textphone numbers are provided, these are for people who find it hard to speak or hear clearly. If you do not have a textphone, some libraries or Citizen Advice Bureaus may have one. Textphones do not receive text messages from mobile phones. You can also call using RNID Typetalk.

Website address	Description
www.dwp.gov.uk	The Department for Work and Pensions homepage.
www.thepensionservice.gov.uk	The Pension Service homepage. This website includes information on state and private pensions, copies of all guides and forms, calculators, and is designed to be the first port of call for state and private pensions information on the web. It tells you what you should be considering. It contains Local Rate telephone, fax and email contact details for The Pension Service for people who live in the UK or overseas.
www.direct.gov.uk	The Government’s electronic portal that enables everyone to access all public services information in one place, including pensions information and advice on planning for your retirement.
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/how-you-can-prevent-crime/	For advice on crime prevention and staying safe

Organisation / Service	Contact
Age Concern	Freephone 0800 00 9966 www.ageconcern.org.uk or contact your local Age Concern
Seniorline (Help the Aged)	Freephone 0808 800 6565 or email seniorline@helptheaged.org.uk
Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)	Local Rate 0845 766 9999 www.rnib.org.uk
Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID)	Freephone 0808 808 0123 Textphone 0808 808 9000 www.rnid.org.uk
NHS Direct (England and Wales)	Local Rate 0845 46 47 www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
Energy Adviceline	0845 094 2516 – For information on saving money and keeping warm this winter Fax 0845 - 0942518
Winter Warmth Adviceline	Freephone 0800 085 7000 Textphone 0800 0857857- for free advice and information on keeping warm and well during winter
Counsel and Care	Local Rate 0845 300 7585 www.counselandcare.org.uk - Advice on rights to community care and welfare benefits
Home Heat Helpline	Freephone 0800 336699 - Offering practical energy advice for vulnerable people
National Pensioners Convention	National Rate 0207 553 6510 Pensioners Centre, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London, EC1 3QP. www.npcuk.org

Including Graduated Retirement Pension, State Earnings Related Pension and Second State Pension

Department for Work and Pensions estimate which covers the number of people with a long standing illness ,disability or infirmity and who have a significant difficulty with day-to-day activities who are covered by the Disability Discrimination Acts but who would not necessarily be entitled to Disability Living Allowance or Attendance Allowance. Based on data taken from the Family Resources Survey (FRS 2004-2005).

On average

As two separate agencies The Pension Service and Disability and Carers Service