DWP sending letters to women born in these years containing £5,000 boost

THOUSANDS of women could be owed average payouts of £5,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP has issued a warning to thousands of married women over State Pension back payments after the National Insurance contributions mix-up.

DWP is paying back women after HMRC identified missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP), with 210,000 women in their 60s and 70s - born before 1964 - impacted by the changes. Steve Webb says HMRC has written to more than 250,000 people over pension age who are potentially eligible and is starting to write to those under pension age.

"Anyone who has received such a letter should make sure that they respond so that their position can be checked," he says. You could be entitled if you claimed child benefit during the years from 1978/1979 onwards and i your partner claimed, it is possible to swap when the 'wrong' parent claims child benefit.

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If you paid the married women's stamp during the same period you claimed child benefit, HRP cannot be used to increase your pension. Also, if you paid standard rate NI contributions and earned enough for it to be counted as a full year for pension purposes while claiming child benefit, HRP will not increase your pension.

Former Pensions Minister, Ros Altmann, who now sits in the House of Lords, says: "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."