State pensioners born before 1953 could be about to get £11,905 payment from DWP

State pensioners born before 1953 could be waking up to an eye-watering £11,000 payment from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). In 2020, the DWP became aware of a number of individuals who had not had their State Pension increased, in accordance with the law, automatically when this should have occurred. This prompted the Department to take action to investigate the extent of the problem.

There are three broad categories of State Pension underpayments: cases covered by the State Pension Underpayments (LEAP) exercise, Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) cases where HRP has not been recorded accurately on National Insurance records and cases where National Insurance credits need to be updated for people who were claiming Universal Credit.

The State Pension LEAP is the DWP’s largest underpayment correction exercise in progress. It has been established to identify where State Pension underpayments may have occurred in respect of three groups of people. The first is Category BL (Cat BL).

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This is people who are married or in a civil partnership who reached State Pension age before April 6, 2016, so born before 1953, and should be entitled to a Category BL uplift based on their partner’s National Insurance contributions.

The second is Missed conversions where people who have been widowed and their State Pension was not increased to include any amounts they are entitled to inherit from their late husband, wife or civil partner. The third is Category D (Cat D).

This is people who reach age 80 - so born before 1944 - and who are getting some Basic State Pension but less than the £85.00 (in 2022-23) and may therefore, subject to satisfying the appropriate residency conditions, be entitled to Cat D State Pension of £101.55 a week (2024/25 weekly rate).

Cat BL case reviews total 321,142 with 45,907 underpayments identified and £5,591 paid in arrears. Widowed (Cat B) has seen 445,188 cases reviewed with 39,706 underpayments equating to £11,905 each. The final category has seen 90,000 claims investigated and reviewed, with underypayments in 33,000 of them amounting to £2,202.