A state pension error could mean thousands of people are owed up to £10,000 in back payments.
Mistakes made by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) have been put down to complex systems and IT rules.
A total of 31,817 underpayments were identified between January 2021 and October 2022.
The latest figures, released in November 2022, are collectively worth up to £209.3 million.
It’s been estimated that around 237,000 older people have been underpaid, amounting to £1.46 billion.
The DWP added that some women have not received the extra state pension payments they’re owed.
According to the Mirror, the National Audit Office (NAO) has put the errors down to “complex IT systems”.
The issue has particularly impacted women who reached the state pension age before April 2016, but it affects other groups too.
One group of people the error impacts is married women as state pension used to be linked to their husbands’ if they were married.
These women should have received a 60 per cent basic rate pension as soon as their husbands retired. The average owed to people in this group amounted to £6,929, according to the DWP.
Another group impacted is widows who were supposed to inherit an enhanced state pension when their spouse died. In this group, arrears are an average of £10,772.
The final main group affected are those who were already receiving a state pension when they turned 80 and who should have been upgraded automatically to the 60 per cent basic state pension. The average owed in this group of people was £3,172.
The DWP said it started trying to find the people this money is owed to in January 2021.
Originally its aim was to complete the project by the end of 2023, but current predictions are that it could run “through to late 2024”.
Pensions Minister Laura Trott MP confirmed this via a letter in November last year.
Anyone who is owed money due to this error will be contacted by the DWP once they have evaluated their case.
It’s likely these individuals will be contacted by the pensions department in a letter stating how much they are owed.
If you believe you’re owed pension back payments you should contact the Pension Service rather than DWP, and they will be able to tell you if you are owed money.
You can call the Pension Service on 0800 731 0469 and find their full contact details on the gov.uk website.
