Hi , all you have to do is contact your local Council's Housing/Council Tax benefit office who will tell you if you may qualify for help in paying rent and/or council tax. As soon as one of you is 60 you can call the Pensions Service who will advise if you qualify got Pension Credit. They are very helpful so give them a call.

I read inthe papers about 2 months ago that in november the savings  which you were allowed to claim rent and council tax help, would go up to £10,000 from £6,000, but yet none of your sites have said nothing about this. could you please tell me that the savings allowance has gone up or not.

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I mwould like to inform you that if you are not paying you national Insurance stamps then you could find yourself without some of your pension when the time comes.

My wife and I had our own business we sold up, I started working for myself ,my wife was ill at home with Virtigo and spent 9weeks without work, then she started work which was fine, Then she was off work  and the firm could not keep her job open, At that time I was diagnosed with Lung Cancer, so she contiued to apply for sick pay. But was refused  because she had missed 9weeks of her stamps when we came out of our business. I still had to send the payment through for that 9 weeks otherwise it would make a difference on her Pension. I would advice you to please check-up on your contributions before it is to late.

We live in sheltered accommadation my husband & myself. We were awarded a grant towards the service charge to help pay for the warden.I was then awarded an attendance allowance because of my ill health. Consequently the grant towards the service charge was stopped. Talk about giving with one hand and taking it back with the other. Or am i being greedy.

Great news this week my husband received his allowance from the Pension Credit Claim he made in May 2008 (yes it did take a while). We were told that if we received a guaranteed Pension Credit that we would also be entitled to a Council Tax rebate. Helpful Note for other people that may claim a Council Tax rebate: Not knowingly I prematurely filled in the Local Council Tax Rebate forms and had everything to hand, when two days later after hearing about our Pension Credit Allowance we received a form from our local Council which was a quarter of the form I had already filled in, in great detail and the Pension Credit department had passed on our deatails to the Council so they were already aware of our circumstances so didn't need all the copies etc of bank details. So we are waiting to see if we are being awarded a Council Tax rebate and that will also help us financially. Thank you for all the replies. Ann B....