Citizens Advice acts to improve claims take-up

A large number of leading charities have called on the government to put ambitious targets in place to increase the take-up of benefits and tax credits. They say that more than £16 billion in benefits go unclaimed each year.

The campaign has been launched by Citizens Advice, who have written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Yvette Cooper, telling her that more needs to be done to ensure that families, children and pensioners in greatest need get the benefits they are entitled to.

The latest official figures indicate that nearly 80 per cent of low paid workers with children are missing out on tax credits worth around £38 a week – totalling £1.2bn.

Almost half of working households who could be receiving housing benefit of around £37.50 a week are not claiming – amounting to half a million households.

Council tax benefits and pension credits are also grossly underclaimed. Nearly three million households are not getting around £13 a week in council tax benefits, and 1.7 million pensioners are losing out on around £31 a week in pension credit.

Housing benefit and council tax benefit take-up have both gone down in the last ten years, and tax credit claims are lower in London than anywhere else, with ethnic minorities generally claiming at a 10 per cent lower rate than the rest of the population.

CEO at Citizens Advice, David Harker, said: “The government has made a serious commitment to eradicate child and pensioner poverty, and to help the working poor, yet up to 10.5bn of means tested benefits and 6.2bn of tax credits remain unpaid each year. This adds up to millions of people in dire need missing out on the help they should be getting to make ends meet. This is bad news at any time, but it’s especially worrying when so many are still feeling the impact of the recent recession. It’s absolutely vital that the government sets ambitious take-up targets for means-tested benefits and tax credits as an important step towards tackling poverty and providing adequate incomes for all.”

He said that the benefits system was very complicated, which was putting people off. However, they could be missing out on substantial amounts of extra cash.

Mr Harker added: “We would urge people to get a free, confidential and independent benefit check at their local CAB.”

“Along with other concerned charities we are now challenging the government to invest the same amount of energy and effort into ensuring people get what they are entitled to as they put into cracking down on benefit fraud,” he added.

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