Thousands of bereaved people could be missing out on substantial payments due to a lack of publicity around this vital help, Which? believes.
One in six eligible claimants are missing out on bereavement support payment (BSP), according to estimates from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
What's more, Which? has found evidence that others who do successfully claim receive only part of their entitlement, due to strict deadlines and a lack of awareness.
That amounts to thousands of individuals missing some or all of their entitlement, even though the payments are not means-tested and take just minutes to claim.
Here, we explain what bereavement support payment is, and what problems people have faced when trying to claim it.
What is bereavement support payment?
Launched in 2017, BSP was introduced to help spouses and civil partners cope financially after the death of their partner, where the surviving partner is under state pension age.
The deceased partner must have paid National Insurance contributions for at least 25 weeks in one tax year since 6 April 1975, or died because of an accident at work or a disease caused by their work.
Claims must be made within three months of the death to get the full amount; you can claim up to 21 months afterwards, but the monthly payments will diminish.
Claimants can receive a one-off lump sum of £2,500 (£3,500 if you get child benefit), and up to 18 monthly payments of £100 (£350 for child benefit recipients).
These payments are set to be extended to bereaved cohabitees with young children, following a Supreme Court ruling.
Thousands missing out
The DWP has estimated that, as of 2018, approximately 84% of people eligible for BSP claimed it. The DWP admits this is a crude estimate, formed by looking at the number of married people who died while under the state pension age, and comparing it to the number of claims for BSP.
But to get BSP, the age of the person who died doesn’t matter; it’s the survivor who needs to be under state pension age at the time of their partner’s death.
Therefore the DWP’s estimate misses out the deaths of people over the state pension age who are survived by a younger spouse. Age-gap marriages are common, with men on average 2.3 years older than their wives in heterosexual marriages, according to our calculations using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Without factoring this in, it is impossible to know the true level of take-up – but it is likely to be lower.
Even by the DWP’s estimate, around one in six eligible claimants are missing out on a significant payout, despite BSP not being means-tested and very easy to claim. That’s 6,900 people not claiming in 2018.
- Read more about bereavement benefits
Why do so many fail to claim?
In early 2021, a DWP study looking at the experiences of BSP claimants found that ‘friends or family’ was the most common route for claimants to first learn about BSP, with 33% citing it.
Just 14% were informed by the DWP helpline, and a mere 8% by the gov.uk website. A further 8% were informed by a funeral director or funeral home.
Smaller proportions of people heard through channels such as Citizens Advice, Housing Associations and Jobcentre Plus, or through charities and local health teams that deal with terminal illness.
Most participants said they'd never heard of the benefit before being bereaved themselves. They were therefore dependent on the luck of knowing or encountering someone who told them about it.
- Find out more: the cost of holding a funeral
Cohabitees are now eligible for BSP
In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled that the exclusion from BSP of unmarried partners with dependent children was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The government only changed the law in October this year, with eligibility for BSP backdated to 30 August 2018.
And in September 2022, the High Court ruled that it is a breach of human rights to deny BSP to surviving families of people who could not work (and make the requisite NI payments) because of lifelong disability. But, at the time of writing, BSP eligibility had not been changed to reflect the ruling.
'Even staff in the DWP agreed publicity is poor'
In November 2020, John Skinley’s wife, Andrea, passed away.
Seven months later, following the lengthy process of probate, John received a letter from HMRC confirming his wife’s tax affairs were in order. The letter made a passing reference to BSP, which John had not heard of.
He searched the gov.uk website and was surprised to discover that, as a working-age widower whose wife had made significant National Insurance (NI) contributions, he was eligible for the benefit.
John found it was simple and quick to fill in the claim application form, but it wasn’t all good news. BSP claimants need to claim within three months of the death to get their full entitlement, as monthly payments can only be backdated by a maximum of three months (21 months for the lump sum).
John only learnt of the benefit seven months after his wife died, so missed out on £400, or four monthly payments. John contacted the DWP to ask why it wouldn’t backdate his BSP, but was told the rules and deadlines were clear.
He was advised to seek a mandatory reconsideration and later an appeal, both of which were unsuccessful.
He said: ‘Even the staff in the DWP agreed that publicity is poor, and the line that they are not allowed to encourage potential claimants seemed to me not a very strong argument.’
- Find out more: how to claim Bereavement Support Payment.
£700 lost due to no-fault delays
In May 2021, Steven Murphy’s beloved wife, Jackie, died in hospital after sustaining severe injuries at home.
Because the cause of her death wasn’t initially clear, a coroner’s report was required to rule out foul play. This meant a death certificate couldn’t be issued, nor Jackie’s death registered, until the report was concluded.
By the time the coroner issued their conclusion – that Jackie had fallen down the stairs in a tragic accident – it was February 2022.
With the death finally registered, Steven was then able to claim the BSP, but by then he had lost out on seven months of payments, worth £700, which the DWP refused to backdate.
He applied for mandatory reconsideration and then an appeal, both of which failed.
Shocked at the injustice, Steven took the matter to a tribunal. This, too, was unsuccessful, with the judge advising that Steven would need to take the matter to Parliament for the rules to be changed.
Steven told Which?: ‘Jackie would not want me to give up and she will be pleased [that by raising awareness] we are not giving up on her or anyone equally disadvantaged by these unfair rules.’
- Find out more: how to register a death
What’s being done to raise awareness?
Which? asked the DWP in a Freedom of Information request how many tribunals had been brought against its BSP decisions. The DWP refused the request, claiming that it would be ‘too expensive’ for it to find this information.
A DWP spokesperson told us: ‘We know the death of a loved one is devastating and that it can impact the family’s finances.’ They added: ‘Alongside our bereavement service, we continue to work closely with organisations helping bereaved people through their journey, so people know to claim vital support.’
They said the department is working with third-party organisations and noted that BSP is now mentioned as part of the Tell Us Once service, whereby you can inform all government services (eg HMRC and DVLA) of a person’s passing in one go.
It provides the DWP with the information it would need to determine your eligibility for BSP, yet when we asked the DWP why it didn’t use that data to proactively contact eligible potential claimants, it didn’t respond.
The National Association of Funeral Directors (NFAD) trade body told us: ‘The subject of financial support can be a sensitive topic and so the nature of these discussions isn’t formulaic, and funeral directors are led by each family in how they approach them.’
It said that it encourages members to talk about ‘all aspects’ of bereavement support, including practical, emotional and financial matters.
The NFAD said that BSP is included in its Manual of Funeral Directors, its education programmes, and that discussing financial support was part of its Funeral Directors Code.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/britains-forgotten-bereavement-benefit-atF695W7eftu