Almost 9,500 people have been paid back missing state pension payments worth up to £8,626, new figures show.
Thousands of retirees, mostly women, are due payouts from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after it identified significant losses in their state pension over two decades.
The DWP said it has so far found 9,491 people who have been underpaid a total of £60.8million.
That's an average of £640 each, but some have been paid back as much as £8,626.
The DWP has been analysing its own figures, and said it has so far found 2,681 married women, owed an average of £7,772 in state pension. It has paid them back a total of £20.8million.
The government department has tracked down 2,381 widows, who were due around £8,628 on average - and this group have been repaid £20.2million.
It has also located 4,429 of the over-80s, owed £4,455 each - £19.7million in total.
However, more women will be owed state pension payments, as the DWP is still investigating the problem.
It previously estimated it underpaid 134,000 pensioners and those it can trace would be paid an average of £8,900 back .
The errors focus on automatic cash increases for certain married women, widows and over-80s dating back to 1992 with "enhanced" pensions.
The DWP estimates the bill for tackling the shortfalls to be about £1billion.
Who is affected?
The underpayment relates to the "old" state pension system - affecting those who reached pension age before 6 April 2016 - which had special provisions for married women.
Under these old rules, married women who had a poor pension in their own right could claim a 60% basic state pension based on their husband's record of contributions.
However, some of these pension were not automatically increased at a certain point .
Pensions Minister Guy Opperman recently told MPs that more than a hundred government staff are now working to assess and manually correct the 'significant legacy issue'.
If you think you might have been short-changed out of your pension, you can use an online tool to check here .
The tool asks a few simple questions that let you know if you have been affected and could be due some money back.
It was made by consultants Lane, Clarke and Peacock, who first uncovered this issue .
While the DWP is trawling its own records this is covering just a very narrow group of women and LCP reckons that far more are missing out and they should take action themselves to find out if they are due a boost to their state pension income.
You could be underpaid if you are:
- A married woman over state pension age, who reached pension age before 6 April 2016 and
- Your husband is over state pension age and
- Your husband has a full basic state pension, currently £129.20 a week, in his own right and
- You are getting a weekly basic state pension of less than £77.45 per week.
