Pensions: Forecasts

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many requests for pension forecasts the Pension Service has received in each of the last 12 months; how many and what proportion of those forecasts were set (a) within 10 days, (b) between 10 and 20 days, (c) between 20 and 30 days, (d) between one and two months and (e) two months and longer of receipt of the request; and if he will make a statement. (259082)

The information is not available to enable the separation of the number of requests for Individual Pension Forecasts from the total number of inquiries received via the Pension Forecasting IT service. Therefore the information given relates to the total number of forecasts issued.

The number of customers who have been issued with an Individual Pension Forecast via the Pensions Forecasting IT system in the last 12 months is in the following table.

*Within 10 daysBetween 10 and 19 daysBetween 20 and 30 daysBetween one and two monthsOver two monthsTotal*
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
2008
February	23,484	86.08	1,396	5.12	660	2.42	306	1.12	1,437	5.27	27,283	100
March	21,109	87.10	627	2.59	768	3.17	226	0.93	1,505	6.21	24,235	100
April	21,838	87.17	514	2.05	778	3.11	278	1.11	1,643	6.56	25,051	100
May	15,931	88.03	183	1.01	681	3.76	128	0.71	1,174	6.49	18,097	100
June	15,868	88.45	143	0.80	259	1.44	474	2.64	1,197	6.67	17,941	100
July	17,656	86.83	399	1.96	561	2.76	519	2.55	1,199	5.90	20,334	100
August	20,599	88.17	690	2.95	755	3.23	525	2.25	793	3.39	23,362	100
September	44,458	94.36	1,401	2.97	706	1.50	378	0.80	173	0.37	47,116	100
October	51,550	93.61	1,507	2.74	1,256	2.28	568	1.03	186	0.34	55,067	100
November	54,177	94.65	1,551	2.71	921	1.61	486	0.85	105	0.18	57,240	100
December	41,330	96.53	666	1.56	529	1.24	261	0.61	31	0.07	42,817	100

2009
January	65,057	97.05	981	1.46	858	1.28	70	0.10	n/a	n/a	66,966	100

The number of customers who received an Individual Pension Forecast from the e-service Real Time Pension Forecasting system is in the following table. All forecasts are produced in real time.

Month	Number of forecasts issued
2008
February	5,318
March	5,883
April	6,350
May	4,395
June	2,957
July	26,353
August	25,453
September	27,759
October	31,061
November	35,490
December	23,731

2009
January	35,264
Total	230,014

PDCS also provided state pension information to pension providers to enable 1,093,986 Combined Pension forecasts to be produced in the period September 2008 to January 2009.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when his Department resumed sending out pension forecasts in response to requests from people who reach pension age after 6 April 2010; how many (a) requests have been received and (b) forecasts have been sent since the resumption; and if he will make a statement. (259083)

The Department offers three channels for pensions forecasts: e-service, telephone, and post.

The real-time e-service resumed on 30 June 2008. This system does not provide information on the age of the customers who have requested a forecast, and therefore the Department is unable to tell how many of the users of the service reach pension age on or after 6 April 2010.

For customers who reach state pension age on or after 6 April 2010, the Pension Forecast service resumed on 26 August 2008 for requests made by telephone or post to the Pension Forecasting IT service. 202,761 customers received a state pension forecast between 26 August 2008 and close of business on 24 February 2009.

Volume 489: debated on Wednesday 11 March 2009