Older people in receipt of the State Pension are being urged to make sure the data the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) holds on them is correct after a new report revealed a staggering £670 million was underpaid in the 2022/23 financial year.
The Fraud and Error report said that official error was the main cause of State Pension underpayments, accounting for £580 million in the financial year ending in 2023. Underpayments due to claimant error accounted for £90 million.
Helen Morrissey, head of retirement analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, explained that the underpayments mostly affect women who retired under the Basic State Pension system who did not receive uplifts they were due. She warned that “many of these underpayments go back years and amount to thousands of pounds” and that even though a DWP correction exercise is making headway in issuing refunds, but “the scale of the problem is vast, and it will take time to complete”.
