‘It’s a matter of survival’: The Labour heartland hit hardest by the winter fuel raid

Pensioners just above the payment threshold are being left in the cold by Reeves’s policy

Pat Woollaston is 86, widowed and surviving on £550 per month.
“I live one day at a time. I find it very embarrassing. Money is your pride. Sitting here and discussing it, I feel ashamed,” she says.
Woollaston is eligible for Pension Credit, a benefit that tops up a single pensioner’s income to £218 per week, but she has not enrolled. So, this autumn Woollaston will lose her £300 winter fuel payment, worth nearly 5pc of her annual income.
At the end of July, in her effort to plug a £22bn black hole in the public finances, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, announced that the annual support for pensioner heating bills would become means-tested.
Winter fuel payments, which are worth between £200 or £300, are now available only to those on Pension Credit, effectively scrapping the benefit for 10m pensioners. The change takes effect just as the energy price cap has climbed by 10pc.
For many older people, this will not be a problem. Recipients included billionaire Lord Sugar and Sir Mick Jagger.
But making the benefit means-tested comes with massive collateral damage. A cohort of 2.5m pensioners who are not on Pension Credit but need the fuel support are now in a detrimental pain zone. Woollaston is at its epicentre.
There are two groups of people for whom losing winter fuel payments will hurt most: those who are eligible for Pension Credit but not receiving it, and those on low incomes just over the threshold to claim.
According to Age UK’s analysis of government figures, there are 1.6m pensioners who are living in poverty and 900,000 who are only just above the poverty line who will lose their payments.
Winter fuel payments needed reform, but the Chancellor moved too far and too fast, warns Steve Thomson, the chief executive of Age UK Birmingham.
Nowhere are a larger share of pensioners likely to feel the pain than Woollaston’s constituency of Birmingham Selly Oak, a Labour safe seat on the south side of Britain’s second-largest city.
Birmingham Selly Oak is not a pensioner heartland per se. Only around 13pc of the local population are over state pension age. But Telegraph analysis found that the area has the highest proportion of those above state pension age who will suffer from the loss of winter fuel payments than any other area in the country.
Of the quarter of constituencies where pensioners are poorest (based on the Income Deprivation Affecting Older People Index), Birmingham Selly Oak is the place where the smallest share are on Pension Credit, at just 17.3pc. In the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, by contrast, the share is 59pc.
This means that 82.7pc of the pensioners in Birmingham Selly Oak – nearly 12,000 people – will lose their winter fuel payments, despite the fact that many of them are on very low incomes.
The constituency is best known for its student population, concentrated around Selly Oak station, and the prime model village of Bournville, built by the Cadbury family for the local chocolate factory’s workers.
But it also covers the grey, graffiti-ed 1960s tower blocks of Druids Heath, the most deprived neighbourhood in the city.
Many pensioners in the area used to have low-income jobs in heavy manufacturing, reflecting Birmingham’s working-class heritage.
“What we’re seeing now is this age group coming through who have got very small workplace pensions or no workplace pensions at all,” says Thomson.
Many women in this age group also have smaller state pensions because they did not make National Insurance contributions all the way through their working lives, he adds.
Broadly in the middle of the Birmingham Selly Oak constituency, geographically and economically, is the neighbourhood of Stirchley, where Woollaston has lived since 1972.
Her situation exemplifies one of the two key problems with the Chancellor’s decision to means test winter fuel allowance.
Reeves and her colleagues have stressed that other support is available. However, of the 2.5m pensioners who are going to feel the pain, Age UK estimates 1m are eligible to receive Pension Credit but are not enrolled.
Retirees can claim Pension Credit if they are over state pension age and have an income that is less than £218.15 per week (or a joint weekly income of £332.95 if they have a partner).
Reeves’s decision has triggered a scramble to enrol. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, the number of applications has surged by 152pc since the announcement.
However, that still represents just 74,400 people – less than a tenth of the total Age UK thinks is eligible.
Accessing the system is particularly hard for the elderly. Woollaston does not have a computer. Last year, she tried phoning to apply for Pension Credit but hit a dead end.
“The woman who took my call wasn’t very approachable. She said, ‘I don’t think I can help you’, and then down with the phone. I felt so let down and disappointed. So I have never tried again,” she says.
Nearly a fifth (18pc) of people aged 65 and over, some 2.3m people, do not use the internet, according to Age UK. At 75 and over, this proportion rises to 29pc.
“They are digitally disenfranchised,” says Timothy Pereira, project manager at the Life House, which runs a food bank and drop in centre in Selly Oak.
The second major problem with means-testing winter fuel payment is the problems it creates for the cohort of pensioners who are only just over the income threshold.
Stefan Gronkowski, who is 71 and also lives in Stirchley, is in this camp. He lives on around £900 per month, meaning he is just £10 over the weekly threshold for Pension Credit.
Not only do those on Pension Credit get winter fuel payments but they also get access to other benefits, including a free TV licence, council tax support, cold weather payments and free dental treatments. These are worth around £2,000 per year combined, says Age UK’s Thomson.
Gronkowski is not eligible for them because he receives a tiny workplace pension from his job in care. “We have paid our stamp all our lives. You do the right thing and you get penalised,” he says.
Jan Shortt, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, says: “We know people who are 10p, 20p, £1 or a couple of pounds over the limit. And what that means is that they don’t get any of the other benefits.”
The reality of losing winter fuel payments for low-income pensioners will be stark. If more elderly people get ill or cannot afford to eat properly, local authorities, charities and the NHS will have to pick up the pieces, says Thomson.
Each year in winter, the number of people coming in for food and warmth at The Life House’s drop in centre swells from around 30 per week to 50. Many attendees on Thursday morning were white-haired.
“I agree that there has to be some kind of threshold, but I am not sure that this is a high enough threshold,” says Pereira, who is keen to stress that the Life House is not politically aligned. “For some people it is a matter of survival.”
A government spokesman said: “We are committed to supporting pensioners – with millions set to see their state pension rise by up to £1,700 this Parliament through our commitment to the triple lock.
“Many others will also benefit from the £150 Warm Home Discount to help with energy bills over winter, while our extension of the Household Support Fund will help with the cost of food, heating and bills.”
Such assurances get a cold reception in Birmingham Selly Oak.
“I know people in their 30s now who have never done a job application who are telling me they are getting £1,400 per month in benefits,” says Margaret, 76, another visitor to the Life House.
“I’m not getting £1,400 per month, and I worked hard my whole life.”
She is planning to turn off all of her radiators this winter, bar three, as she will lose her winter fuel payments. “They want us to die and get rid of us, so that they don’t have to pay our pensions.”
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