Sorry to hear about your redundancy @mitch (assuming that it wasn’t a good thing for you, given your age and proximity to state pension?)
I agree that the 4 weekly payment system used (I think) for most benefits is irritating. Surely everyone manages their money monthly (standing orders etc)? A payment on the same day every month (like my private pension) would be much more sensible.
Just a thought, but your £878 every 4 weeks would indicate that you are not getting a full new state pension? Might be worth checking if that’s the case. If it’s down to you not having a full National Insurance history, HMRC will allow you to ‘buy’ those missing years and it’s a no brainer to do it, although you have to do it within so many years of the missing ones, and you probably have to do it before you start drawing the pension, so it might be too late. Still worth a look though.
Also, re the tax (you probably know this) but HMRC will reduce your tax code by the value of your state pension (as they do with other taxable benefits), so effectively its tax free (if, in total, the payments are less than your tax free allowance) which will have the effect of increasing the tax on any other taxable income, such as private pension. It all works out the same, but it’s just how they do it and it confuses many people. I’ve no idea how war pensions work though, so you may already be well aware of all this!