If you moved to France after you turned 60 chances are that you may be expecting a Winter Fuel payment shortly. Sadly it looks as though you'll be disappointed as now the Government website states that you must be resident in the UK to receive it.....
Another unheralded change for the over 60s that has been sneaked (snuck?) in concerns men who attain pension age after April 2010 - they will no longer be able to get an increase for a dependent wife under 60.....
If you have declared yourself to be living in France and have had your health cover transferred I think you will need more than a plane ticket or till receipt to prove residency! That would qualify as ‘visiting’.
Well done for confirmation, and yes seeing as we have all paid our contributions why should we not get it, it gets cold here just as much as where I lived in England !!!
just picked up on the rest of this discussion… Goodness how complicated… I am a phase in pension person, I get mine in March 2011… so think if the day of residence is in September next year I shall spent my 61st birthday in the UK… I suppose plane ticket or ferry ticket or a receipt from a shop in UK using MY credit card would suffice for proof.
I rang International Pensions Dept at Newcastle whp told me that despite what it says on their website YES if you got it last year you will get it this year. If you turn 60 after moving to France you won’t unless you contrived to be living in the UK on that week in September…Payments will be sent out w/c 21st Nov or 4th Dec. It will be paid at £250 per household into the recipient’s UK bank account. From the horse’s mouth…
I think this rule is if you are applying for the first time in 2010, if you already get it then it should continue…thats the way I read it and those rules have always stood.
That does seem to hold out hope but there is somewhere else on the site where it says you will lose it if you move “abroad”. I agree - transparent as the Gascon clay. We’ll wait to see what happens next month. Meanwhile they’ve paid out £10m in “resettlement” grants to former MPs. Don’t think that the French deputies are any less greedy - they voted themselves a allowance of just under 6000€ a month for five years when they get voted out!?!
That’s just bizarre!
But it also says under that Once you have qualified for a Winter Fuel Payment, you may be able to continue to receive future payments if you move to another European Economic Area country.
So what are they classing as ‘normally live’.
If you move to an EEA you can still continue to claim it - does that mean that you cant be resident then in another EEA to claim it, just move there i.e your 2nd home?
They’ve made it as clear as mud as per usual!
But that’s the point, Diana, they seem to have changed the rules without any notice. OH did get it last year but unless I’m reading the site wrong, he will no longer be entitled…
Stu… if she got it in the UK as over 60 there is no way they can stop it… your mission for today… sort it!!
From the elderly Brits I know here, you had to be over 60 and claim in UK as a resident to get WFP… They still get it here as it is transferable, so guess the secret is be in UK until you are 60… if you can bear it!
Diana
Absolutely. They let Vodaphone off £6billion, slash Corporation tax for companies earning over £350,000 and yet make cloak and dagger cuts that hurt. If they cut us, do we not bleed?? If it’s cold, do we not shiver???