The Pensions (2015 Act) (Consequential, Supplementary and Incidental Amendments) Order (Northern Ireland) 2017

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Order)

This Order makes consequential, supplementary and incidental amendments in relation to the provisions of Part 5 of the Pensions Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which creates a new bereavement support payment for persons whose spouse or civil partner dies on or after 6 April 2017. Bereavement support payment replaces the existing social security benefits for the bereaved (bereavement allowance, widowed parent’s allowance and bereavement payment).

Articles 2 and 3 enable bereavement allowance and bereavement payment to remain in payment. Those benefits will only remain in payment for people whose spouse or civil partner dies before 6th April 2017. When the award of those benefits comes to an end, the amendments made by this Order will come into operation for that person.

The amendments in this Order are all to secondary legislation. The majority of these amendments add a reference to bereavement support payment and/or remove a reference to bereavement allowance and bereavement payment. The amendments therefore mainly (1) enable existing secondary legislation to work in the same or similar way for bereavement support payment as it does for existing benefits for the bereaved or (2) remove references to existing benefits for the bereaved where the secondary legislation does not need to apply to bereavement support payment.

In particular, the following amendments are made.

Articles 9, 14, 19, 21, 22, 25, 28 and 29 make amendments which provide for how bereavement support payment is to be taken into account in income-related social security benefits. These are benefits which determine a claimant’s entitlement by reference to their income and capital. The amendments provide that bereavement support payment will be ignored when calculating a claimant’s income. The amendments also provide that any initial lump sum amount of bereavement support payment and any payment of arrears for 12 months will be ignored when calculating a claimant’s capital.

Articles 13, 16 and 27 make similar amendments to child support regulations so that bereavement support payment is not taken into account as income under those regulations.

Article 10 amends the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1987. Those Regulations contain the rules on when a claim to a benefit has to be made, how claims are made, how payments of benefit are made, the dates on which payments are made etc. The amendments apply those rules to bereavement support payment. For example, the amendment made by Article 10(7)(d) provides that a claimant must claim the initial lump sum amount of bereavement support payment within 12 months of the death of their spouse or civil partner.

Article 15 amends the Social Security and Child Support (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999. Those Regulations contain the rules on how decisions relating to benefits should be made, when decisions can be changed, how appeals can be made against the decisions etc. The amendments apply those rules to bereavement support payment.