Might you know the relatives of someone who died and has yet to receive last years parity payments?
Scottish Government have asked Haemophilia Scotland and SIBF to try and help track down relatives who might qualify for payments.
Under last year’s parity agreement across the UK, SIBSS beneficiaries received backdated increases in their annual payments – these were backdated to April 2019 when the UK Government increased its annual payments under the English scheme (EIBSS). In cases where the beneficiary had died since April 2019, it was agreed that their estate would be able to claim these backdated payments for the time period between 1 April 2019 and the date the beneficiary died.
However, SIBSS has tried but been unable to locate the estate executors or beneficiaries for a number of estates. There are currently still 9 beneficiaries where no one has claimed their backdated payment (8 of these are for an infected beneficiary and 1 is for a widow). Unfortunately, SIBSS doesn’t have any other realistic way of trying to find eligible relatives for these people and, under the agreement with the UK Government, they will only fund these backdated payments if they are claimed by 31 March this year.
So we are asking for your help. Are you aware of any relatives of beneficiaries who died between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2021 and if so might you be able to check with them if they have claimed their backdated payments? If they haven’t, please encourage them to contact SIBSS as soon as possible (the estates of the infected beneficiaries would all also be eligible for the £10k bereavement lump sum and there is no deadline for claiming that) There is a link to the SIBSS website below that gives more information for people on how to make a claim and provide the evidence to confirm that they are entitled to claim on behalf of the deceased person’s estate. Apply for the £10,000 bereavement lump sum | National Services Scotland (nhs.scot) .