How five London Boroughs unlocked more than £1 million a year in unclaimed Attendance Allowance for their older residents

Last spring, Policy in Practice partnered with the Greater London Authority and five London local authorities to run an innovative benefits take up campaign targeting households potentially missing out on Attendance Allowance, the main pension age disability benefit.

By using data to identify households likely to be missing out, the campaign successfully helped 240 households to claim more than £1 million a year in Attendance Allowance.

This crucial financial help is enabling older residents with health conditions to live more independently and with greater dignity, while also reducing the amount of unclaimed benefits.

This campaign broke new ground by identifying thousands of households in the five participating boroughs who were potentially missing out on Attendance Allowance, and contacting them via letter to tell them about the benefit and explaining how to submit a claim.

As with other past Pension Credit and other London wide benefit take up campaigns carried out by Policy in Practice and London Boroughs, with support from the GLA, the Attendance Allowance campaign demonstrates the incredible potential of targeted take up work through the proactive use of benefits administration data.

Attendance Allowance is the main pension age disability benefit for older individuals people who need help with day to day living or personal care due to an illness or disability. It can be worth up to £5,740 a year at the current benefit levels. However, a combination of lack of awareness, confusion over eligibility, and a complex application process means that many older people with health conditions are missing out on this key support.

We know from our previous research that Attendance Allowance is a particularly underclaimed benefit in the UK, with an estimated 1.1 million pension age households missing out on more than £5 billion in Attendance Allowance annually. Claiming Attendance Allowance can also unlock top ups to existing claims for benefits like Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support, meaning that the true value of support going unclaimed by these households is much higher than £5 billion.

With around 20% of London pensioners living in poverty, maximising pension age income by increasing the take up of benefits is more important than ever. Attendance Allowance is particularly crucial given the known extra costs of living with a disability. The extra income from Attendance Allowance can help households with the cost of care, food, heating, and much more, allowing pension age individuals with health conditions to live independently for longer. 

For all of these reasons, Policy in Practice and the Greater London Authority partnered to use benefits administrative data to run targeted take up campaigns for those potentially missing out on Attendance Allowance, as had been done successfully for those missing out on other benefits before.

Funded by the Mayor of London, Policy in Practice partnered with five local authorities in London to use data analytics to identify and support pension age households who were more likely to be eligible for but not claiming Attendance Allowance.

We analysed benefits administrative data from the participating councils to identify 5,789 different households who might be missing out on Attendance Allowance. The boroughs, assisted by Policy in Practice, then sent two letters to each identified household letting them know that they may be missing out on Attendance Allowance, and setting out how to submit a claim.

Households were identified as being potentially eligible for Attendance Allowance where they were single person households aged 80 or older, and they were not already in receipt of any disability benefit.

Within five months’ of the campaign’s conclusion, 240 of the households contacted were successfully claiming Attendance Allowance worth more than £1.1 million annually. The average age across all new claimants was 86, with the oldest being 97.

We heard about one resident who went on to claim Attendance Allowance after being identified and contacted as part of the campaign. She had some earnings from self employment, but could not cover her energy bills or taxi fares to her hospital appointments for her health condition, causing stress which made her health worse.

After she received our letter, she got in touch with her council and went on to claim not only Attendance Allowance, but other support she was entitled to as well. She was able to cover her bills and taxi fares as a result, and described the extra money as ‘a life saver’.

All of the 240 individuals who claimed Attendance Allowance as a result of this campaign will have a similarly powerful story to tell.

If all of these new claimants continue to claim for the rest of their lives, they will receive over £7 million in support. This lifetime impact figure does not take into account the value of any additional benefit top ups unlocked by claiming Attendance Allowance. Nor does it reflect the value of allowing new claimants to live independently for longer.

The success of this campaign shows the viability and potential impact of locally run Attendance Allowance take up campaigns.

Policy in Practice has already worked with multiple local authorities around the country to identify households potentially missing out in their area, allowing councils to target them for support to claim this key benefit.

A wider London campaign involving 16 different local authorities is also underway this spring, with letters already sent to almost 13,000 different households. This is more than twice as many households contacted in the initial 2024 campaign, and if a similar level of success is achieved for this current campaign as seen last year, we can expect to see at least 500 new claims for Attendance Allowance in the participating boroughs.

Policy in Practice works with one in three local authorities around the country to support low-income residents and identify households missing out on support. We work to close the unclaimed support gap, as we know that more than £23 billion is going unclaimed annually in means tested benefits alone, and our campaigns have a high success rate, helping households to claim millions of pounds in support that they did not know they were eligible for.