---

Benefits Uprating

The Pension Service is sensitive in such cases and there is specific training to make sure that people deal with customers appropriately. Age Concern carried out research with people who had gone through that process with the Pension Service. There have been concerns that older people do not find it helpful to use the telephone, but actually 70 or 80 per cent. of them found the experience very satisfactory or satisfactory. We introduced a local service of home visits for people who did not want to use the telephone. We try to use the right approach and we always try to be sensitive to the needs of older people to make sure that they understand exactly what they are being asked.