john mmm

hi, hope somebody could help me , i will hopefully be going back to uk next year,when i reach pension age ,i will be 65 ,after living and working in holland ,for 15 years for an uk engineering company (welder) will i have a problem passing the hrt ,,or would i pass the same test here in holland ,so i could recieve benifits here , my basic state pension will be low waiting for a forcast ,any help would be greatly appriciated , thanks in advance

Sue

Hi John,

A Belated Welcome to BE!

I came across your post in our Netherlands forum but have moved your thread to our Moving back to the UK forum as we have lots of people who are currently moving back who post in this section and you may get a better chance of picking their brains here.

TheEmperorIsNaked

Hello John, I think there are others here that will have more expertise than myself, but I have had to learn all this stuff because of my return home after nearly four decades away.

-If you qualify for a pension in Holland because of your age and contributions, then it would be good to get it-I am unsure if Holland and the UK has a reciprocal agreement for you to be paid your Dutch pension in the UK though?

-Your UK pension would be based on the level of National Insurance contributions you made. It will also be based on your age. I am unsure whether it is paid at 65 though??

-Habitual Residency: you will only need to undergo this if you apply for non contributory benefits such as Housing Benefits; and you must be on British soil before you can apply.

-If you have a British Passport as a British citizen, then you have an automatic Right of Abode-this is entirely different to the HR test.

Hope this helps. I'm sure those with more detailed knowledge can advise you further.

Good luck!

scot47

I came back to live here after many years working abroad. I passed the HRT but was disallowed benefits for the first month. Similar position to the OP

mikelincs

We moved back to the UK after several years in Spain, got housing benefit and council tax benefit immediately. I wonder if that was due to the fact we had been in an EU country, in which case the OP would qualify straight away.

TheEmperorIsNaked

Good point. I believe it's EU.

windsong

I didn't realize you could apply for housing benefit upon entry to the UK.

old.sparkles

Not sure on all the rules for applying, but if you have savings above a certain limit then you wouldn't be eligible, unless you are on pension credit. Think it was around £16k or £17k but not sure what it is now. Worth exploring though

BristolUK

There was some guidance issued where resuming residency after living in the EU was supposed to make it easier.

Yours is the first post I have seen where it's happened.

I'm not sure when it was issued. The way time flies, it could have been a 2 or 3 years ago.

If you returned before that you probably did a good job in presenting the logical steps you took to resume life back in the UK.

When the guidance was issued, unfortunately some reported it as being a formality. Consequently returnees were not presenting their case sufficiently and doubt then arose.

That and a mixture of staff being unaware of the new guidance (not all areas experience applications from folk who have lived away) and continuing to apply rigid "qualifying periods" which never existed. Like the month mentioned earlier.

morayeel

when I moved back last year I put deposit on flat , signed on to jsa and applied for housing benefit. I passed the habitual residency test. It took about a month for them to get back to me, but even although I intended to stay in the UK unforeseen circumstances took place and I am back in the US

mikelincs

We came back 4 years ago, at that time the savings limit was very low, £6,000, so we ensured we were less than that, we were quizzed on whether we had property abroad, and a lot of questions, but got it after she referred our request to a supervisor., as soon as I became an OAP, and started to receive my state pension, then all benefits were lost.