Armed Forces Pensions Included in Housing Benefit Disregard
Under long-standing rules, a war pension (i.e. War Disablement Pension, a War Widow’s Pension or a War Widower’s Pension) attracts a mandatory £10 income weekly disregard in the income related benefits (Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, State Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit).
In addition to the mandatory £10 disregard, for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit purposes there is also an additional income disregard that local authorities have powers to operate at their discretion. These powers allow local authorities individually to modify the Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit scheme by disregarding some or all of any War Disablement Pension, a pension to a war widow or war widower or a similar pension paid to a surviving civil partner remaining after the mandatory £10 disregard has been applied. The benefit costs of doing this are largely borne by the local authority.
All the war pension definitions in the relevant social security legislation were changed in January 2009 to align and simplify wording across the income-related benefits. The definitions are derived from numerous payments, pensions and allowances that make up the armed forces pensions and compensation schemes, which also include a new scheme introduced in 2005 that replaced the war pension scheme for new entrants.
In doing so, the regulations excluded from the benefit disregards an element that was previously included - the service attributable pension. This is the element of occupational pension under the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 1975 paid in respect of injury or illness that is attributable to service. This exclusion did not reflect the policy intention.
It is unlikely that this error has an effect on £10 disregard cases as it will be very rare for a service attributable pension to be in payment where there is no war pension of at least £10 a week. However it could have a practical effect on Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit case where local authorities have used their discretionary powers to apply an additional disregard. As the Department does not have data on the full extent of the discretionary disregards it has gathered some information from a sample of local authorities and believes the impact in terms of benefit entitlement is likely to be negligible. It is possible that some local authorities are continuing to disregard these payments in accordance with the policy intention and have not taken action to put in place a revised discretionary scheme following the amendment of the regulations in January 2009.
This change restores the policy intention whilst taking account of updated legal references from the Armed Forces Pensions Scheme and simplifying some of the references. It also restores the pre- January 2009 position in regard to the wording used to cover war widowers and surviving civil partners in these Regulations.
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