[Dallas McConnell]

Hi All,

Some questions with pensioners and processing.

Do you accept verbal applications? If you accept verbal do you still request a copy of the pension card be sent in?

We have a situation where the property was owned by husband and wife. We only ever had the husbands aged pension details on file and verified accordingly. The husband passed away and we wrote to the wife to obtain her details if she was eligible. We have received an application from her but her card start date of her aged pension was 10 January 2025, the wife has advised she held a carers pension for her husband before this and we can see this in Centrelink with a card start of 15 October 2019.
Our Policy states that we dont back date and we only put it on from the card start date based on the remaining quarters in the year.

I guess im at a moral dilemma, according to her she was always a pensioner and should be entitled to extra $62.50 but from a processing/policy perspective she doesnt meet the criteria. What if she became ineligible between 2019 and current and we didnt know because we didnt have her details to verify.

I can see if it escalates that council will just give her the $62.50 (which i tend to agree with), but it does have implications to how we process when there is a surviving owner that we didnt previously hold their details…

Thanks Dallas

[Cherie Muir]

Good question Dallas. Sometimes policies are unable to cover everything. Could the policy driver for not going back retrospectively be more about new applications (as opposed to cases like this one)?
Go with your instincts and if that is to provide the rebate retrospectively to ensure seamless entitlement in this case (so long as you have evidence of eligibility which I believe you do have), seek a once off decision outside of the policy and document that decision. Does your policy have a statement about a certain officer of council being able to vary the policy from time to time?

[Dallas McConnell]

Thanks Cherie,

Appreciate the response 🙂

Maybe more to the point do you do verbal applications. If you do, do you request a copy of the card. Once you run the verification, if there are two seperate entitlement dates, which date do you grant?

[Cherie Muir]

Shoalhaven doesn’t do verbals yet Dallas, but keen to arrange soon. When we do, we will not require copies of the PCC to be supplied. I believe Centrelink will want to validate your verbal set up and give it their nod before you go live. In my last interaction with Centrelink on this at another council it was clear to me that Centrelink do not expect that councils are collecting copies of PCCs.
For your verification (for your example above), providing you have their consent, I’d verify against the date of grant that will evidence the outcome you wish to grant.

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