Sir – You are right to point out (Report, August 6) that 14,000 people in this county are growing older in poverty. Oxfordshire is often viewed as affluent and advantaged.

The reality is, as these official figures show, that there are areas in our county where life is very hard and where older people are forced to shiver in winter, think of a tin of soup as a luxury, and live apart from normal life and opportunity.

Money is available to help. But too often older people do not lay their hands on their rightful entitlement. Based on national estimates well over £100m of pension benefit in Oxfordshire is not claimed every year. The total sums of unclaimed support for older people will be even higher. Millions of pounds that would ensure adequate nutrition, help people get out and about, and (in these troubled times) stimulate the local economy. We need urgency in work across the county to put people in touch with their rights, using community groups to give advice, and cutting the form-filling people have to do to a minimum.

We need to encourage people to carry on working for as long as they want and are capable, rather than shunting them into the sidings at 65. We need local politicians to clamour for equality in age and to link the state pension to increases in earnings now, rather than the distant and vague promise of indexation we have been offered.

Thousands lined the streets for Harry Patch. Let us now turn such tributes to courage and resilience shown by so many people, now in later life, into concrete action, for the sake of older people in Oxfordshire, including 14,000 on our doorstep who shockingly survive on the breadline.

Paul Cann, Chief executive, Age Concern Oxfordshire