Why We Began
Silverwings Benefits was founded by Craig Lowther after his own father was rejected on his first Attendance Allowance application — despite genuinely needing the support. Once Craig helped him reapply properly, the claim succeeded. That single experience revealed something much bigger: the Attendance Allowance form runs to 30 pages and asks people to describe exactly how their condition affects them, day by day — a task many genuinely entitled applicants find very difficult to get right without support. Nationally, DWP’s own published figures show 59% of new disability benefit claims are disallowed.
Since launching in October 2023, we’ve helped over 1,000 people apply for the support they’re entitled to, putting more than £5 million back into their pockets — with a 96% success rate on the applications we submit.
Local Jobs, Skilled Work
We’re based in Newcastle and proud of it. Every application we handle is worked on by a real person in our North East offices — not an offshore call centre, not an algorithm alone. We’ve created 35 full-time roles for skilled advisers, case handlers and support staff, turning a genuine social need into sustainable, local employment.
How We Work — And Why We Charge For It
We’re not the DWP, HMRC, your local council, or any government department, and anyone can apply for these benefits themselves for free, or with free help from Citizens Advice or Turn2us — nobody has to pay us for anything.
What we offer instead is a paid-for service — and we’re transparent about that at every stage. Every advice call is recorded with your consent, and transcripts are available to you on request. If you choose to proceed to a full application, you will be told at least twice, clearly, that we charge a fee if we successfully secure an award for you. The decision is always yours, and you have a full 14-day cooling-off period from the date you sign an agreement with us to cancel, no questions asked.
We’re not here to exploit anybody. By the government’s own published figures, 59% of new disability benefit claims submitted nationally are disallowed. On average, the DWP issues a decision within 32 days of us submitting an application, and 74% of the applications we submit are upheld within that period — we applaud the DWP for assessing them that quickly, because speed matters enormously to our clients. For the remaining 26%, we provide a full Mandatory Reconsideration service at no extra cost, and of clients who choose to proceed, we have a 96% success rate, typically within 60–90 days. We do this because we believe every application we submit is genuinely deserving.
The cascade doesn’t stop at Attendance Allowance. Around 60–70% of clients awarded Attendance Allowance also turn out to be eligible for Pension Credit, which we can typically secure in around 20 days and which averages an extra £5,000 a year. Of those awarded Pension Credit, around 90% are then eligible to have their Council Tax bill reduced or annulled, saving an average of £2,000 a year. Every client receives a free annual benefit review to catch any change in circumstances or newly available support as the years go on.
We will never take payment upfront, and we cannot and would not deduct our fee directly from a benefit payment — it’s simply not possible for us to do that. The DWP pays your award directly to you; our fee is always invoiced separately. Our technology is built to spot exactly when a new payment lands — sometimes before our client does — so we can check it matches what was applied for and, always with recorded consent, look for the next benefit or social tariff in the chain.
Before anything is sent to the DWP, every application passes through several rounds of technology-assisted quality control. You’re given a copy of what we’ve prepared and the opportunity to check and amend it at any time before submission — nothing goes in your name without your sign-off.
The wider picture is why we make no apology for charging for this: according to independent research by Policy in Practice (2025), around £24.1 billion in income-related benefits go unclaimed in Great Britain every year. If the system were fair and worked as intended, that figure would be zero. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. We built a business, and 35 local jobs, around helping fix that gap for the people who choose to use us — and we charge a fee, capped to a successful outcome only, for doing it.
A Message From Our Founder
I started Silverwings Benefits after watching my own father get turned down for Attendance Allowance — a decision that was wrong, and that we overturned once someone who knew the system properly got involved. That experience shaped everything about how this company runs, including something I want to say plainly:
I do not accept that everyone who turns 67 is vulnerable. I think it’s frankly insulting to assume that anyone over a certain age is incapable of making their own informed decision about whether to use a service like ours.
Yes — there are vulnerable people across society, and we take real care with anyone who needs it. But there are also plenty of people who wouldn’t describe themselves as vulnerable at all, who simply choose a professional, transparent service to handle something time-consuming and form-heavy — in exactly the same way people choose a solicitor, an accountant, a will writer, or a funeral director for other important things in life. That’s not exploitation. That’s a choice.
On regulation: we are not currently required to hold FCA authorisation for the work we do, and we don’t claim to be FCA regulated. What we do is hold ourselves to that standard voluntarily — and if the rules ever changed so that regulation was required, we’d apply and follow the process properly. We think that’s an important distinction, and we’d rather be upfront about it than let anyone assume otherwise.
We’ve looked, and we can’t find any other provider in this space publishing data on their waiting times, their capacity to process applications at volume, their success rates, or how they handle and resolve rejections. We do publish ours, with our clients’ consent, because we think that’s what transparency actually looks like — not just saying the word.
We charge nothing if we’re not successful. We never ask for money upfront. And we offer interest-free payment plans specifically so no client is ever left with less money in a given month than they had before working with us. If someone claims a benefit for five years, we believe the value of that outcome — measured against a one-off fee taken only once, only on success — is an excellent return.
More than that: our own research suggests the money we help unlock gets spent locally and across the UK, on goods and services that directly improve people’s quality of life — and that improved financial security later in life is linked to better health outcomes and less pressure on the NHS. We publish that research openly. Until someone shows us a credible argument that this isn’t a good outcome, we don’t agree that helping people claim £24.1 billion in benefits that already legally belongs to them is exploitative. We’re trying to tackle a genuinely enormous problem, at scale, and we’re proud of that.
We acknowledge no system is perfect. Every day, we invest in our people and our technology to try to improve our service. We treat others the way we’d like to be treated — and if we make a mistake, we admit it and try to put it right. We welcome regulation.
— Craig Lowther, Founder, Silverwings Benefits
This is an earlier recording and predates some of our current positions on regulation and vulnerability — a refreshed version is coming soon.
