Teachers’ Pensions used to check if I was alive. Now it seems to assume I’m dead

Even after teachers have finally left the classroom, it seems they still sometimes need their powers of patient explanation. Photograph: Wavebreak Media ltd/Alamy

I contacted you a year ago after you wrote about teachers not receiving their pensions because of assumptions that they were dead. I had received six letters essentially informing me that my payments would be stopped unless I confirmed that I was still alive.

Recently the payments did stop, only this time I had not received any letter. It only arrived after I called Teachers’ Pensions, dated six weeks earlier.