DWP urges women born before 1964 to check if owed £5k | Personal Finance | Finance

Thousands of women could be in line for an average payout of £5,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after a National Insurance contributions blunder.

The DWP has sounded the alarm for thousands of married women regarding State Pension back payments following a mix-up with Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP).

The DWP is issuing refunds to women affected by missing HRP records, with around 210,000 women in their 60s and 70s born before 1964 being impacted by the oversight.

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.

Webb said: “Anyone who has received such a letter should make sure that they respond so that their position can be checked.”

Eligibility criteria include having claimed child benefit from the tax year 1978/1979 onwards, and if your partner was the claimant, it’s possible to switch when the ‘wrong’ parent has claimed child benefit.

However, if you paid the married woman’s stamp while claiming child benefits during this period, HRP cannot be used to boost your pension, reports Birmingham Live.

Similarly, if you made standard rate NI contributions and earned enough for it to count as a full year towards your pension while receiving 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 issue: “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.

“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.”