Thousands of women could be in line for an average payout of £5,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) due to a National Insurance contributions error. The DWP has alerted numerous married women regarding State Pension back payments after a mix-up involving missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP).
This issue affects around 210,000 women aged between their 60s and 70s, born before 1964. Steve Webb, former Pensions Minister, highlighted that HMRC has contacted over 250,000 individuals over pension age who might be eligible and is now reaching out to those below pension age.
“Anyone who has received such a letter should make sure that they respond so that their position can be checked,” he advised. Eligibility may apply if you claimed child benefit from the tax year 1978/1979 onwards, and if your partner claimed, it’s possible to switch when the ‘wrong’ parent has claimed child benefit.
However, if you paid the married women’s stamp while claiming child benefit during this period, HRP cannot be used to boost your pension. Similarly, if you made standard rate NI contributions and earned enough for it to count as a full year towards your pension while claiming child benefit, HRP will not enhance your pension.
Baroness Ros Altmann, also a former Pensions Minister now in the House of Lords, commented on the situation: “So many of these poor pensioners are experiencing problems and delays because of a lack of communication between HMRC and DWP and each department believes the other is responsible.”, reports Birmingham Live.
“Sadly the DWP is the department responsible for actually paying the pensions out and they have huge backlogs of cases to deal with. It’s not clear there is any easy answer while there are so many errors which need correcting and the DWP is also currently diverting staff to the pension credit campaign to offset the loss of Winter Fuel Payments and assess claims from huge numbers of people.”
“The Winter Fuel Payment decision is adding hugely to the pressure on DWP resources which were already stretched before.”
