HMRC sending out 370,000 letters to state pensioners owed £7,859

HMRC sending out 370,000 letters to state pensioners owed £7,859
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HMRC has confirmed over 370,000 letters have been sent out to older people. The Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) has released data on the progress of correcting historical State Pension errors, revealing that the average arrears payment is worth £7,859.

In 2022, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) became aware of a number of State Pensions cases where it appeared that historic periods of Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) were missing, leading to inaccurate State Pension payments.

Investigations revealed that this issue applied to the National Insurance records, administered by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), of some people both below and above State Pension age. DWP and HMRC set up a Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP) corrections exercise to identify and invite potentially affected people to apply, correct their records, and make both arrears and ongoing revised State Pension payments.

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The DWP recently said it had "basically finished" its state pension correction exercise and is making "good progress" in addressing HRP errors. Permanent Secretary Peter Schofield was asked for an update during the latest Work and Pensions Committee hearing. He said: "I praise the professionalism of the team, because this is real detective work that they have gone through, but they have got there, and they have got money to people.

"I am really pleased, and I apologise through this committee to customers for these historic underpayments. It was vital that we restored confidence in the system, and one of the ways that we did that was by doing more work through our survey data on getting to grips with any other historic errors that there might have been.

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"On that specifically, HMRC have been leading the way, because this relates to the national insurance record and linking that to child benefit claims prior to 2000 - these are quite historic claims. HMRC have put details on their website - I think there have been almost 500,000 hits to their website. They have written over 300,000 letters to affected people.

"They are now seeing cases coming through the door - at quite a slow rate, I should say. Those are then addressed in terms of correcting the national insurance record. That then enables us to change the state pension entitlement and, if someone is already in receipt of state pension, to then pay any arrears. We have got through around 11,000 of those that have come through.

"Around 19,000 have been handed over to DWP, and we have got through around 11,000 of those, so we are making good progress on that."