A state pension mistake could mean that thousands of older people are entitled to back payments worth up to £10,000. The errors made by the Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP) have been blamed on IT systems and complex rules.
According to the latest figures, which were released in November, a total of 31,817 underpayments were identified between January 2021 and October 2022 - worth £209.3million collectively. It is estimated as many as 237,000 pensioners have been affected by the DWP mistake overall, and that means that around £1.46billion has been underpaid.
The National Audit Office (NAO) blamed the error on “outdated IT systems” and complex rules, according to the Mirror, this led to pension increase claims needing to be made manually rather than automatically. The DWP has admitted some women have not been paid extra state pension payments that they were entitled to.
