The DWP has issued a warning over a letter going out to all state pensioners as you could be owed £8,377.
DWP sending letters to all state pensioners containing ‘information’ they must act on
The Department for Work and Pensions is issuing a warning over letters landing on the doormat for all state pensioners. The DWP has issued a warning over a letter going out to all state pensioners – who are born before 1959 – as you could be owed £8,377.
The Labour Party government has already written to some 370,000 people about the issue. Since 1978, parents who take time off work to care for their children have been granted National Insurance credits for those years to make up for any gaps in their National Insurance record.
The system was originally called Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) HRP allowed parents to build up entitlement to the State Pension despite not working.
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National Insurance Credits for parents and carers replaced HRP from 6 April 2010. Since April 2016 the full State Pension is only paid out to those who have at least 35 years of full National Insurance contributions. Anyone with less than 35 years qualifying years (or NI credits) won’t receive the full amount.
However, it has been discovered that the system in place hasn’t accurately recorded HRP credits for some mothers, and in some cases women who took time out of work to raise children have been underpaid their State Pension over the course of their retirement.
The Government has confirmed this newly discovered error is the second-largest source of mistakes in the payment of state pension, behind the £1.5bn underpayment to married women and widows.
A government spokesperson said: “We’re determined to help people who’ve been left out of pocket due to historical errors which are no fault of their own.
“That’s why we wrote to more than 370,000 people potentially affected, and launched an online tool to help people check if they can claim. “We ran an extensive campaign to raise awareness of the issue and will continue regular communications to get people to check their National Insurance record.”
Speaking about letters ALL state pensioners will receive, the spokesperson said: “The government will continue to signpost people to where they can find out more information about HRP and to the support we have available, via ongoing communications activity.
“For example, DWP now includes information on HRP in annual state pension uprating letters.”
Annual uprating letters land ahead of April’s hike in payments.