Brits could be owed £1,000s after a former minister found evidence of more Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) errors with state pension payments.

The DWP has been undertaking a correction exercise since 2021 to fix previous state pension errors relating to certain groups of people.

The DWP is said to owe £500 million in back pay to more than 80,000 people across the UK, including married women, widows and pensioners.

Each person who has been affected by the error could be due a back payment of £6,250 on average.

A review by the DWP found that there had been a possible 82,323 underpayments, mostly involving married women who reached state pension age before April 2016.

Brits could be owed £1000s as more state pension errors found

But Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister who is now a partner at Lane Clark & Peacock (LCP) said he has found evidence of a new group of cases where incorrect information was given.

It involves people claiming the new state pension who were already widowed when they retired.

Sir Steve said he had been contacted by four separate people who had not been awarded any inherited state pension when they retired and had been told in writing or over the phone by the department that they were not entitled.

In all four cases, this was incorrect and an increased amount of state pension has been arranged and arrears have since been paid, he said.

In two of the cases, the underpayment amounted to more than £2,000 per year, which could potentially add up to a £40,000 shortfall over a typical retirement.

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The new group, according to the pension and investment consultant, appears to include those who are widows or widowers at the point when they claim their new state pension and where either:

  • The spouse who has died reached pension age before April 6, 2016
  • Where the spouse died before April 6, 2016

Sir Steve said: “Having had to spend years checking hundreds of thousands of historic state pension calculations for errors, you would hope that DWP would be making sure that new claims are handled correctly.

“But we have found worrying evidence that this is not the case.

“There seems to be a particular problem for people who are widows or widowers when they claim their state pension.

“In some cases DWP seems to have failed to automatically add any inherited state pension they were due from a late partner.

“These cases may well be the tip of an iceberg.”

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He added: “The department needs to launch an urgent investigation into the scale of this problem.”

How to check what additional state pension you are entitled to

LCP has developed an online tool to help people understand what additional state pension they are entitled to inherit on top of their own - which can be found here.

The DWP also has a similar tool which helps those receiving the new state pension assess their eligibility for inherited state pension amounts,

This tool can be found here, while a guide on inheriting or increasing a state pension can also be found on the DWP website.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We want to ensure pensioners receive all the support to which they are entitled and have a tool to help them understand what state pension they can inherit.

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“Delays can occur to a customer’s state pension award when not all the information we need is provided.

“In these cases, we will make a state pension award based on the customer’s own national insurance record until we have the required information.

“Once we have the necessary documentation, we will then revise the customer’s claim as soon as possible.”