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Some individuals who had been widowed once they retired might be lacking out on a few of their state pension, a former minister has claimed.
Various critiques by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have been going down since 2021 to appropriate underpayment of the state pension, primarily to ladies together with widows and divorcees.
Now Sir Steve Webb, a accomplice at pensions consultancy LCP and former pensions minister, has stated a brand new group receiving the brand new state pension and widowed once they reached pension age might even have shortfalls.
The DWP stated it needed to make sure everybody acquired their appropriate entitlement.
Sir Steve has investigated the circumstances of 4 individuals who weren’t awarded any inherited state pension once they retired.
However, errors had been present in all the circumstances and bigger quantities and arrears had now been paid, he stated.
In common, the brand new group prompting concern seems to incorporate those that are widows or widowers on the level once they declare their new state pension and the place both the partner who has died reached pension age earlier than 6 April 2016 or the place they died earlier than 6 April 2016.
The precise quantity of inherited state pension will depend on particular person circumstances, together with earlier employment standing and different pensions.
It comes throughout ongoing workouts to appropriate state pension underpayments which have to this point seen greater than £280m paid in arrears to round 23,000 widows or widowers who had wrongly missed out on inherited state pension from a late husband, spouse or civil accomplice.
Sir Steve stated: “Having had to spend years checking hundreds of thousands of historic state pension calculations for errors, you would hope that DWP would be making sure that new claims are handled correctly.
“In some circumstances DWP appears to have didn’t mechanically add any inherited state pension they had been due from a late accomplice.”
He stated 1000’s of individuals might probably be affected.
A DWP spokesperson stated: “We want to ensure pensioners receive all the support to which they are entitled and have a tool to help them understand what state pension they can inherit.
“Delays can happen to a buyer’s state pension award when not all the knowledge we want is supplied.
“Once we have the necessary documentation, we will then revise the customer’s claim as soon as possible.”
