People of State Pension age may be due up to £600 heating bill help over next few weeks

Meghan Markle had a one word answer for Prince William’s response to her and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.

A road trip to the north east of Scotland by two Spanish friends came to an abrupt end when their van broke down in the Cairngorms amid -17C weather. Manuel Gutierrez, 35, and Beatriz Castejon, 30 started their venture along the east coast through Stonehaven and into Aberdeen on Friday (December 9).

It’s official. Dua Lipa has moved on from Anwar Hadid with Jack Harlow, a source exclusively tells Us Weekly.

Basic and New State Pension payments will increase next year by 10.1% for some 12.5 million older people across the UK, including 992,052 living in Scotland. The honouring of the Triple Lock rule was confirmed last month during Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement and means that older people are set for an income boost from April, 2023.

Christmas Day is on a Sunday this year which means Boxing Day is on a Monday, however, the bank holiday status for that date has been moved to Tuesday, December 27. This means that State Pension payments and benefits for older people delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions which are due on those dates will be made earlier.

Legacy benefit claimants across the UK who missed out on the £20 weekly uplift paid to millions of people on Universal Credit during the coronavirus pandemic will be able to watch a livestream of the appeal hearing from the Court of Appeal today, Wednesday December 7.

There are an estimated 19.2 million families and 39.8 million individuals across the UK currently in receipt of State Pension or benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) who will see their payments go up by 10.1% next year. The uprating will come into effect on April 10, 2023.

State Pension is a contributions-based benefit that provides essential financial support for over 12.4 million older people across the UK, including some 981,399 living in Scotland. However, research by Age UK has found that an estimated 1.25 million women who are claiming State Pension are living below the breadline - equivalent to one in five.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed it has no plans to allow people diagnosed with a terminal illness to access their State Pension prior to retirement age, even if they have accrued sufficient National Insurance Contributions.The official age of retirement is 66 for both men and women and at least 10 years’ worth of National Insurance Contributions are needed for any State Pensions payment.

The latest figures from Social Security Scotland show that at the end of February, 2022 there were 124,081 people living in Scotland receiving additional financial support through Attendance Allowance. Across the UK, there are now more than 1.5 million people over State Pension age getting either £61.85 or £92.40 each week through the benefit.

The new Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has confirmed that the outcome of the State Pension age review will be published before May 2023. The review will consider a wide range of evidence, including findings from two independent reports, to assess whether the rules about State Pension age remain ‘appropriate’.

EXCLUSIVE: Susan Storman, the celebrated Broadway director and choreographer, has revealed that an acclaimed UK revival of musical comedy Crazy for You, which features show-stopping numbers from the George and Ira Gershwin songbook, will transfer from the Chichester Festival Theater into Andrew Lloyd Webber’s LW Theatres-owned Gillian Lynne Theatre for a strictly limited 30-week West End season from June 24. Opening night is July 3.

Filming has wrapped on an under-the-radar screen adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, Ben Foster and Colin Morgan.

An online petition calling for a minimum weekly State Pension payment of £380 for all men and women over the age of 60 is set to be debated in Parliament next month. The petition, created by Michael Thompson, has received more than 107,980 signatures of support from people across the UK and will now be debated by MPs on Monday December 12, 2022.

Emma Sidi has landed the role of broadcaster and MacTaggart Lecture giver Emily Maitlis in Channel 4’s upcoming satire Prince Andrew: The Musical.

Learning to drive is not only a time commitment, but it can also be expensive and a recent survey from Marmalade Insurance suggested that almost half of instructors have upped the price of lessons as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed during his Autumn Statement that the UK Government’s review of the State Pension age will be published in early 2023 and is scheduled to be released in May. At the start of this year, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched a second review of the State Pension age, which is now 66 for men and women across the UK.

Basic and New State Pension payments will increase next year by 10.1% after weeks of uncertainty for nearly 12.5 million older people across the UK. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had declined to commit to whether the Triple Lock rule would return for the 2023/24 financial year after a temporary pause due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

State Pension payments are set to increase by 10.1% from next April for merely 12.5 million people across the UK, including 992,052 living in Scotland. However, despite a record-breaking rise in payments of the contributory benefit, over 1.8 million pensioners are receiving less than £100 per week in State Pension payments.