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 number of times the online pensioner toolkit was accessed in each of the last six years.

The Pension Credit toolkit is an on-line tool aimed at agencies and welfare rights organisations to help them encourage Pension Credit take-up. It can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-credit-toolkit

The toolkit contains resources for anyone working with pensioners and includes guides to Pension Credit. It also contains publicity material and guidance designed to help older people understand how they could get Pension Credit and help organisations support someone applying for Pension Credit as well as ideas for encouraging take-up. The toolkit also provides links to information about disability and carers benefits.

Information available on the number of times the Pension Credit toolkit was accessed is in the table below. For comparative purposes it includes data on the number of viewings of the Pension Credit overview page on GOV.UK, which is considered the most likely initial starting point for the public obtaining on line information about Pension Credit.

Notes:

1. Data is for calendar years

2. Data refers to the following webpages

• toolkit landing page
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-credit-toolkit
• advice and guidance for stakeholders
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-credit-toolkit/pension-credit-toolkit-advice-and-guidance-for-stakeholders
• first page of the main Pension Credit guide for claimants
  https://www.gov.uk/pension-credit

3. Data shows the number of times these webpages were accessed.