Highland Council is set to invest £870,000 in bid to dig thousands out of poverty as Council leader Raymond Bremner says the move sparked by ‘eye-watering’ £70m in unclaimed benefits
Highland Council is set to invest £870,000 in a major bid to dig thousands of locals out of poverty by helping them access £70 million in unclaimed benefits through a new poverty and equality commission.
Council leader Raymond Bremner believes that “eye-watering” £70 million sum is partly down to people not knowing how to claim what they are due and partly down to a system that perhaps “doesn’t want people to claim benefits”.
The role of the poverty and equality commission will be to tackle poverty “effectively” in the Highlands, including by considering rural factors and helping people access benefits.
The push by the council coincides with Independent Age’s Jumping Through Hoops report exposing how older people often struggle to complete claims because they have to answer up to 450 questions.
The issue is compounded for those who lack internet access, have mental or physical health conditions or low literacy levels while “many older people feel a sense of stigma and shame when asking for financial help”.
Two older people interviewed for the report said: “Applying for help in way of benefits is extremely difficult in the end, one just gives up and continues to struggle”, another added: "By the time you finish you feel absolutely awful, mentally exhausted and worry you won’t get the help.”
And that is a major problem across the north because it multiplied the impact of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to make pension credits the qualification for winter fuel payments.
In all, almost 59,000 Highland pensioners lost the winter fuel payment because just 6772 qualified for the pension credit, and another 3000 more were not claiming the pension credit leading to more fuel and financial poverty.
Councillor Bremner said: “I'm sure that there are many families out there and many individuals who actually don't know what's available for them and what benefits they could actually receive in life.
“There are 3000 not claiming pension credit and for me that is half the town of Wick, and they would have had the ability to face the tougher climate and the longer nights if they had the access to that money or ability to claim it.
“Sometimes I think that our communities think that they have just got to get on with it and just face the maybe unrealistic hardship because they just don't know what the support is.
“This is not a one-off. This is to make sure there is a continued long-term benefit for folk who currently don’t have access to benefit, haven’t been claiming and have not been claiming it for years.
“It is almost as if the system is functioning in such a way that it doesn’t want people to claim benefits but I know there is the necessity to prove to the public purse that the claims are genuine.
“But I also think that we have to balance that with the accessibility of benefits for people who, let’s face it, are in more vulnerable categories in our communities so the commission will tackle that inaccessibility, the barriers that are in place - like the questions.
“I think that is what is important about the commission, they will have a single focus on the outcomes we are looking for and have the ability to measure what those outcomes are.”
Independent Age found that the latest pension credit take-up figure is 65 per cent so 970,000 individuals are missing out on financial support with £1.5 billion going unclaimed.
While the latest housing benefit take-up is 83 per cent, meaning 270,000 older households are missing out with £1.1 billion currently going unclaimed.
Independent Age chief executive Joanna Elson is calling on the UK government to develop a take-up strategy that removes barriers and to work with local authorities on delivery.
“There are currently around two million older people living in poverty, and a further one million are precariously on the edge,” she said. “The UK government and local authorities must work together to drive take-up for benefits such as pension credit and housing benefit.
“There needs to be an entitlement take up strategy that tears down the barriers that make it so difficult to understand the system, and in some cases, inaccessible for many people in later life.”
