Funeral Payments

(asked on 9th July 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the amount of money owed to the public purse from funeral expenses payments.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 17th July 2018

We make low-cost funeral expense payments to people who receive (or whose partners receive) a qualifying benefit or Tax Credit. These are recoverable from the estate of the deceased and where there aren’t enough assets available in the estate it is written off.

DWP’s Annual Report and Accounts 2017-2018 contains information on losses associated with the social fund at page 159, which can be found here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721224/dwp-annual-report-and-accounts-2017-2018.pdf

There were 663k (gross) of Funeral Expense Payments outstanding as at 31 March 2018.

The Department for Work and Pensions has the discretion to apply interest at 1.5% above the Bank of England Base Rate when recovering an outstanding Funeral Payment from an estate.

Interest would be charged on any balance outstanding at the end of each calendar year.

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