DWP mistake sees over 12,000 Brits receive £8,300 state pension payout
HMRC has been writing to thousands of older Brits over the last few years after confirming a major administration error had occurred, which caused thousands to have lower state pension payments than they should've
Thousands of Brits were underpaid their state pensions and have recently received a payout worth £8,377. According to a recent Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) update, 12,379 people were identified between January 8, 2024 and March 31, 2025 as being underpaid.
The issue, first coming to light in 2022, saw large numbers of parents – mostly stay-at-home mums who claimed Child Benefit – missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) on their National Insurance record.
The HRP scheme ran from 1986 to 2010, before being replaced by National Insurance credits. It was designed to protect people's National Insurance contributions towards their state pension when they were out of work due to caring responsibilities.
HRP reduced the number of qualifying years you need to claim the state pension. The main cause of the issue was that National Insurance numbers were not always recorded when people claimed Child Benefit before 2000.
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This caused some people to miss periods of HRP between April 6, 1978 and April 5, 2000 which subsequently affected how much state pension they could get when they claimed it. HMRC and the DWP are currently working to identify those affected by the error and pay them what they are owed.
According to the latest update, HMRC sent 370,018 letters, processed 8,639 applications under the state pension age, and 44,296 applications over the state pension age. In total, the DWP received 22,781 cases from HMRC and processed 21,878 of them.
The government departments previously said those closest to the state pension age - in their 60s and 70s - are being issued letters first. Alongside this, the government departments set up Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP), which allowed those affected to apply, correct their records, and make both arrears and ongoing revised state pension payments.
Overall, the DWP paid out £104million to those affected. However, this is only around one-tenth of the original £1.1billion estimate set aside by the DWP last year.
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Industry experts have raised concerns over the pace of the government's progress in addressing HRP errors, which is set to continue until 2027/28.
In a report published by the DWP alongside the update, the department shared reasons why the response rate to the department's letter scheme was low. Many recipients are elderly with limited internet skills, yet the Government has implemented a "digital by default" application process requiring online eligibility checks and claims.
Many recipients said that they thought the letters might be scams, and so did not respond. People also reported being anxious about engaging with government. Some thought that they probably would not be eligible or that it was now "too long ago" to put things right.
The research also found that 'participants generally relied on their own assessments of eligibility, rather than using the online tool identified in the letter'. Some simply did not understand the connection between historic receipt of Child Benefit and entitlement to HRP and how this could affect their state pension.
Steve Webb, partner at pension consultants LCP, who first raised concerns about missing HRP more than 15 years ago, expressed disappointment at the results.
He said: "It is deeply disappointing that efforts to track down mothers being underpaid their state pension have so far failed to reach the vast majority of those who the Government thinks have lost out. Writing letters to elderly people which guide them towards a two-stage online process was always going to have a low success rate.
"People are understandably wary of scams, and expecting them to do their own online eligibility check before submitting an online claim was bound to put many people off. Whilst DWP deserve credit for conducting research into the reasons for the failure of the strategy so far, it is vital that efforts are now redoubled to make sure that far more people get the state pension that should have been theirs by right."
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