Thanks George, sorry I didn’t mean to contradict. For someone not working a small pot exemption could mean claiming back the 20% so amounting to being tax free.
Claim a tax refund when you’ve taken a small pension lump sum (P53) - GOV.UK Claim a tax refund when you've taken a small pension lump sum (P53) - GOV.UK
Totally agree. However I had a brainwave..I emailed Money Column in The Observer.The genius, Jill Insley, got on to them 3 times on our behalf. She said the Pru was within its legal rights re no drawdown, the pension was too old but didn’t tell us we could withdraw the whole amount without a financial advisor. Result! I have tried to contact her to thank her but The Observer has changed ownership and she left. I will keep trying to find her…so grateful…
CA Britline confirmed that
Apparently it was 3.5 not so long ago. Now 1.75.
You can move the pension to another provider that has a drawdown facility such as L&G, Royal London etc. don’t know if that helps?
Thank you. However. We took the money and ran ! The men are cladding our mouldy 200 year old cupboards , our 26 year old Hyundai failed Controle Technique we paid 2500 to renew rusty chassis, having a new garage roof, getting leaky radiators fixed, handrails fixed on dangerously steep garden steps and planning first holiday in 7 years..yippee for Jill Insley when I find her !! After 7 years of famine 7 years of house maintenance beckons. One very happy bunny here ….
There’s lots online about Jill Insley, various papers although I’m not sure where she is now, LinkedIn and other websites. I’m sure you’ll track her down. :
This is definitely an area to take care on. Not giving financial advice… but for the french tax resident among us it can be a good idea to take the pension all as one lump sum and benefit from the low tax rate on offer on france for doing this instead of doing draw down. Of course strings and conditions exist.
Then the battle is just with HMRC to recover all the Uk tax they took from you to start with. Which should be easy but…
Just doing it now with two pensions of my spouse and had an advisor handle arangements to be ready to do it for me when I hit a magic age number…
I thinka lot of people are hesitant to take financial advice re pensions or other financial stuff. I was, but was persuaded by a friend to have someone look over my finances and give advice on consolidating the three separate pensions I had. The financial advisor gave me several options based upon what I told him about what I wanted and my risk profile. He handled all the process of consolidation from start to finish and it was the best thing I ever did as far as finances were concerned.
Indeed. It costs money - but might save/make you an awful lot more.
Well I have to be nice to hmrc today. France form individual for my spouse filled in on a lump sum, sent to Newcastle and refund in our bank account in a month. Nice surprise for once :-))))
We understand the French taxman will take 7 and half % plus 13% goes to social securityn when we declare it on our next tax return .
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Slightly more complex and depends if you have a UK S1 or not. Also applies ONLY If you are taking the whole pension in one go not just the UK “tax free lump sum” and ticking certain other boxes like “was it tax deductible when you paid in.”
Then my understanding is - just sanity checked with Gemini:
Well done! And thanks for the feedback, so many of us are in this game. @AngelaR
Can I ask, was it a small, medium, large lump sum, say on a scale of 1-200K?
There’s been talk of a thread to track such claims and their timescales, though with the well embedded human right of ‘thread drift’, it doesn’t seem to have happened. 
Did two in the last three months…both solved within the month.. one in the 1-5k range and one in the 10-15k. I deliberately didnt do as one claim mainly to make it dead easy for hmrc to process.
Attaching the p60s might have helped as well…they dont ask for them but if it helps things go through I will remember for the future.