How do you notify DWP and Attendance Allowance people of change of address under a POA

[t0ria]

Hi all. My dad's house sale is going through this week, I am acting under a POA. He's now living in a care home.

I know i need to notify gas, electric, council tax and water and they are "relatively" straight forward. I am having huge problems notifying the pensions service of his change of address and circumstances, or Job Centre Plus about his attendance allowance.

You can't speak to anyone on the phone and have to register for a government gateway account, which I can't do as it's not actually me i need to speak to them about. Does anyone know how I am supposed to do this?

Is there anyone else I need to notify?

Thank you!

 

[thistlejak]

We had to register our COP Deputyship with DWP and Attendance Allowance before they would deal with us on the phone. I think I got the address from the .gov website and sent them a letter with the Deputyship document ( they did return it). I suspect if you register your POA it will work the same way.
Hope this helps.

 

[nitram]

If your LPA is recently registered with OPG and you want to register it with DWP you could use do it online
https://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/threads/have-you-registered-as-a-carer.126253/post-1778542 .

 

[t0ria]

If your LPA is recently registered with OPG and you want to register it with DWP you could use do it online
https://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/threads/have-you-registered-as-a-carer.126253/post-1778542 .

That looks really helpful but unfortunately I've had it since 2010. i wish this had been around then!

 

[nitram]

They are considering opening it up to older powers by application.

 

[Lynmax]

You need to register the POA first then they will change the address to yours. I’ve just done it but can’t remember if the DWP needed a paper certified copy or if they wanted it emailed to them as I was also notifying a number of other organisations - HMRC, private pension, investment companies re shares, old savings accounts etc. I went through all mums paperwork getting contact details, account references etc and wrote myself a list so I could annotate it as I went along.

I’ve not quite finished as i lost the will to live with all the work but I did find every company I contacted were very helpful.

I had already arranged for post to be redirected to me last May when Mum went into the home but typical of me I left it to the last minute to start the process - her house will have tenants in soon! I might extend the post redirection to give me a few more months just in case I miss something.

 

[SewHappy]

I had to do the same prior to the change mentioned by Nitram. I needed to register the LPA with DWP and Pensions Service and was reluctant to send off one of my paid for certified copies. At that time (also pre-Covid) you could visit a JobCentrePlus for them to prepare their own certified copy with their own stamp on it. It was this copy that I was given to send off to the departments that dealt with mum's pension and attendance allowance. I was told that some JobCentrePlus can log it direct on the system but the one I visited could not.

I'm pretty sure I sent it to one of them and asked them to note it for both - one being DWP and the other Pension Service. The LPA is joint and several with my husband but I was told to send a covering letter nominating one of us as the person who would deal with mum's benefits. It all worked, I only wrote to one of them but now both services write to me at my address about mum' s benefits and they will speak to me on the phone too.

What I don't know is if JobCentre are still doing this in Covid times. Thistlejak said the documents sent in were returned and it would cut out the visit to JobCentre.

I also recommend getting the post redirected and you can do this with LPA too. We did it for a year.

 

[t0ria]

They are considering opening it up to older powers by application.

That would be amazing, I hate having to post it off all the time!