UK women win £2.7bn top-up to underpaid state pensions

Terron

Rich2808 said:

Just wondering how this happened.

From the This is Money link - "The current Pensions Minister Guy Opperman recently explained that many elderly women lost out on state pension because junior civil servants failed to manually update their individual records during past decades."

thetaxwoman

Martin Lewis included details in a weekly email sometime around May 2020. I followed it up for my 84 yr old mother who was getting £1.55 per week (yes, one pound 55 pence😱). After persisting for several months she’s now getting £82 per week and has been a total of £62,000 to cover the period from 1997! 

JoeCrystal

thetaxwoman said:

Martin Lewis included details in a weekly email sometime around May 2020. I followed it up for my 84 yr old mother who was getting £1.55 per week (yes, one pound 55 pence😱). After persisting for several months she’s now getting £82 per week and has been a total of £62,000 to cover the period from 1997! 

Blimey.... I hope the taxes were properly deducted! Glad to hear good news at someone getting the correct amount though.

Pollycat

MSE article (updated yesterday) here:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/married-women-missing-state-pension-boost/

madlyn

So my Mum passed away in 2018, I have read Martins piece on this and I am unsure if I need to contact the DWP to check if there is/was an issue or will my Dad be contacted if there is an issue?

maisie_cat

TVAS said:

(Removed by Forum Team)  

It will be a longwinded reconciliation exercise, requiring a matching exercise when much of the data will not have been created digitally. I would expect each pensions reconciliation to take several hours if not a day.You are correct, any means tested benefits paid as a result of the low pension will need to be unwound, why wouldn't it be?  The idea is to put people back where they would have been in the first place. I looked at this for my late MIL who had a low pension and I thought it should have been higher. Because she claimed pension credit it would not have made a great deal of difference, and pension credit gives access to lots of other things.

Dazed_and_C0nfused

maisie_cat said:

TVAS said:

(Removed by Forum Team)  

It will be a longwinded reconciliation exercise, requiring a matching exercise when much of the data will not have been created digitally. I would expect each pensions reconciliation to take several hours if not a day.You are correct, any means tested benefits paid as a result of the low pension will need to be unwound, why wouldn't it be?  The idea is to put people back where they would have been in the first place. I looked at this for my late MIL who had a low pension and I thought it should have been higher. Because she claimed pension credit it would not have made a great deal of difference, and pension credit gives access to lots of other things.

Maybe there will be some people who wished this never came to light as pension credit isn't taxable but State Pension is.

Pollycat

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Maybe there will be some people who wished this never came to light as pension credit isn't taxable but State Pension is.

My Mum inherited part of my Dad's pension when he died and it meant her income took her over the Guaranteed Pension Credit limit which resulted in losing a significant amount of qualifying benefits.

3card

Sorry if i'm missing something but if, like my parents, they are both passed and any payment is automatically paid (be it now or in 5 years) where will the notification be sent bearing in mind if the previous address is no longer accessed and obviously the bank details are long gone?

thetaxwoman

JoeCrystal said:

thetaxwoman said:

Martin Lewis included details in a weekly email sometime around May 2020. I followed it up for my 84 yr old mother who was getting £1.55 per week (yes, one pound 55 pence😱). After persisting for several months she’s now getting £82 per week and has been a total of £62,000 to cover the period from 1997! 

Blimey.... I hope the taxes were properly deducted! Glad to hear good news at someone getting the correct amount though.

Oh yes, properly taxed - self assessments followed in very short time 😂.  I have to say staff at DWP were universally helpful and sympathetic, despite clearly under a lot of pressure. Once I (politely) invoked their complaint procedure it was all resolved very quickly in the end. 

Note to self: I really must update my nickname to “theextaxwoman”