New evidence indicates more widows and widowers may also have underpayment errors on their State Pension claim. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) recently published updates on the progress of the State Pension Underpayments Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP) exercise and the Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) corrections exercise. However, former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb , who is now a partner at LCP (Lane Clark and Peacock) announced last month that there is evidence to suggest that a new group of people may have errors on their State Pension which could result in annual underpayments of around £2,000.
The former Lib Dem MP said people claiming the New State Pension, who were already widowed when they retired, may have been underpaid and due a back payment. This is a bit complicated and relates to inherited State Pension, however, to make it easier for people to check how much they should be receiving, LCP has developed an online tool which you can use here . A tool previously launched by LCP to help married women check for underpayments had over one million visits.
Sir Steve said: “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. But we have found worrying evidence that this is not the case. “There seems to be a particular problem for people who are widows or widowers when they claim their.