DWP confirms extra £5,600 being paid to 80,000 state pensioners

Thousands of state pensioners are getting an extra £5,600, it has been confirmed. The Department for Work and Pensions has issued an update on its ongoing initiative to correct State Pension payments.

The Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP) exercise will continue to the end of the year and has so far dealt with underpayments for pensioners who are either married or aged over 80. The DWP discovered that £736 million is owed to those who are either receiving too little or not getting any pension at all.

Those with insufficient National Insurance contributions to qualify for any Basic State Pension may be entitled to a pension through their husband, wife or civil partner's NI contributions. This is called a Category BL State Pension and can give them a Basic State Pension of up to £101.55 a week (at 2024-2025 rates).

In addition, people who have reached the age of 80 and are getting no Basic State Pension or less than the full amount can qualify for a Category D State Pension that uplifts their entitlement to £101.55 a week. Due to government errors, thousands have missed out on these amounts.

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The DWP says it has reviewed the cases of more than 321,000 married pensioners and identified almost 46,000 underpayments totalling £250.6 million. This means average arrears of just under £5,600 have been sent out.

In the over-80s category, nearly 91,000 cases have been checked. More than £68 million has been paid out to well over 33,000 people, with an average of £2,200 going to each affected individual.

These two sets of completed underpayment corrections mean almost 80,000 pensioners should by now have received up to £5,600 - and in some cases more - in their bank accounts, the DWP said.

The DWP added that thousands more older people are also set to be repaid missing sums by the end of next month. These are people who are widowed and get a Basic State Pension of less than £169.50 a week (in 2024-2025 rates) but may also be able to derive pension entitlement from their late spouse or civil partner.

This could then give them a Basic State Pension of up to £169.50 a week. This group can also inherit between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of any Additional State Pension and 50 per cent of any Graduated Retirement Benefit. So far £417 million has been repaid to widowed pensioners after almost 40,000 of 445,000 cases were found to be incorrect, with these underpayments set to be completed by the end of this year.

Two other types of State Pension errors are also being investigated. These include cases where Home Responsibilities Protection is missing from the records of stay-at-home parents and carers who did not include a National Insurance number on their Child Benefit claim. Other instances relate to Universal Credit claimants who could be getting less than their full pension entitlement because their National Insurance credits were not processed by HMRC.

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