End Frozen Pensions campaign: Supporting British Overseas Pensioners

Government Relations and Public Affairs – PR and Media Relations – Campaign and Advocacy

The Challenge

Nearly half a million British pensioners residing in some countries overseas do not currently benefit from the yearly, inflation-linked increases to the UK state pension, meaning they receive a state pension that effectively remains ‘frozen’. Supporting the End Frozen Pensions campaign, representing the interests of those impacted worldwide, Tendo provide public relations and political engagement support to raise both the public profile of the campaign and secure backing from a core group of parliamentarians in Westminster, both with the aim of challenging the Government on this longstanding policy.

Our Strategy

Our public and political engagement programme has been focused on communicating the deep sense of injustice and unequal treatment felt by a majority of British overseas pensioners who are impacted by the policy. In engaging with the media, our strategy has been to turn this issue into a human interest story focused on British pensioners themselves, as well as its resulting political and diplomatic tensions, away from the campaign’s ‘natural’ media presence in personal finance sections.

To communicate this perceived injustice, we have focused on telling the story of Anne Puckridge, a World War Two veteran whose pension has been ‘frozen’ since her move to Canada in 2001. Her story has been a central feature in over 40 national publications since 2022 alone. The raised media profile of the campaign has enabled us to engaged more effectively in a parliamentary context, building a core group of parliamentary supporters who now consistently attend campaign events and raise the issue in spoken contributions in both the House of Commons and House of Lords. Thanks to the campaign’s regular parliamentary backers, the policy issue has been raised more than 40 times across both Houses since 2020.

We have sought to engage with other key political allies on this issue given the diplomatic implications of the policy, with a number of Governments of impacted countries now regularly raising this issue in formal diplomatic channels. In order to do this, we have gained close working relationships with both the Australian and Canadian High Commissions in London.

The Result

Tendo’s focused approach to parliamentary engagement, using the media to raise awareness and the campaign’s overall profile, has successfully created a large pool of support among parliamentarians since the 2024 General Election. More than 50 Parliamentarians attended a campaign Parliamentary event in October 2024. The event preceded the delivery of a letter to Number 10 Downing Street calling on the Government to address the policy, that was signed by an unprecedented 150 Parliamentarians from both the UK and Canada, including the Canadian Minister for Pensions.