UK Pension Service: Life Certificates

If you receive a ‘life certificate’ from the UK Pension Service, you need to return the completed form to the International Pensions Centre.

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If you receive a ‘life certificate’ from the UK Pension Service, you need to return the completed form to the International Pensions Centre.

Your pension payments may be suspended if you do not send the form back by the given deadline. For further enquiries about UK pensions and benefits:

International Pension Centre

TEL: +44 (0) 191 218 7777
Website: https://secure.dwp.gov.uk/ipc/personal-details

For more UK government information on what you need to know when travelling to or living in the Philippines visit: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-the-philippines

Difficulties UK Expats in the Philippines have encountered

Time limit on returning forms is unrealistic in the Philippines as the post here is so unreliable. Pension is normally stopped before the form is received, if at all. Surely in this ‘data’ age an on-line alternative could be found.

16 weeks I am still waiting for stuff posed in June last year.

Form was apparently sent in August, by the time I received my pension was already stopped, I called Newcastle and they said that the Philippines is not the only 3rd world country they have problems with, but they are working on a new way to solve this, hopefully this year sometime. I kept a copy of the blank Life Certificate and I told them I would in future send a completed one every 3 years to Wolverhampton, this they recommended doing.

I think the Embassy need to address the issue of no mail been received since Mar 2020 here in the Philippines, therefore some people may never get the form……It is astonishing that this cannot be done by email, zoom / skype to verify as well as being instant.

Yes, I think we are all aware of this procedure. Snail mail is NO GOOD! Can the Embassy please apply some pressure to the DWP to set up a secure email system to send out and then receive these ruddy forms? They are causing MANY of us considerable inconvenience and distress.

I received a letter from them yesterday dated 6 December, they told me pension was stopped on 6 December as they haven’t received the proof of life form. Wrong! I sent it back with DHL & It was received by them on the 1st December, I have the delivery receipt from DHL together with the name of the person who signed for the package!!!! Grrrr

As you can see from the comments regularly made on Social Media, these pension Proof of Life forms continue to cause considerable stress, anxiety and inconvenience for all concerned. Until such time as a more modern solution is implemented, UK expats living in the Philippines need to be on the ball and chase all such documentation fastidiously.

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