Simple tool that reveals if you’re being underpaid state pension – its free and takes just minutes
A SIMPLE tool could help to reveal if state pension households are being underpaid – and it’s totally free and takes just a few minutes.
A series of government blunders mean that hundreds of thousands of people have been paid less state pension than they should have.
The mistakes disproportionately impact women, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only group affected.
Depending on why your pension was underpaid, you might get the backdated payments automatically, or you might have to apply.
It’s possible that you fall into more than one category, as there is some overlap, so you may need to follow a couple of different processes to get what you’re owed.
We’ve put together a full list of reasons you could be owed backdated state pension payments worth £10,000s.
LCP has developed an online tool to help people understand what state pension they are entitled to inherit on top of their own state pension here.
A tool previously launched by the company to help married women check for underpayments had over one million visits.
You will need to be prepared to answer some questions about your age and marital status, as well as how much money you currently receive in state pension.
If you’re using the married woman’s calculator, you will also need to have information about your husband’s pension to hand.
If it turns out that your state pension is being underpaid because of an error, it’s worth contacting either the DWP or the Pensions Service.
Steve Webb, partner at LCP and former Pensions Minister, said: “The department needs to launch an urgent investigation into the scale of this problem.”
The DWP also has a tool to help those receiving the new state pension assess their eligibility for inherited state pension amounts on the government website.
There is also a guide on inheriting or increasing a state pension on the gov’s site.
Calculate your state pension payments
To qualify for the new state pension, you need to have paid enough National Insurance (NI) contributions or credits.
You need at least ten years on your record to get any payments at all. To get the full amount, you usually need 35 years’ worth of contributions.
If you have gaps on your record, you can choose to buy the missing years to boost your state pension payments.
To find out whether you’re on track to get the full state pension, you can check your forecast on gov.uk.
You’ll need to sign in through the government gateway. If you’ve already got an account, use those details, otherwise you might need to set one up.
Everyone reaching retirement age now can only qualify for the new state pension, which follows the rules outlined above.
But if you are either a man who was born before 6 April 1951 or a woman who was born before 6 April 1953, you’ll get something called the basic state pension, and you might also get additional state pension.
You can read more about the basic state pension on the government’s website.
What are state pension errors?
STEVE Webb, partner at LCP and former Pensions Minister, explains what state pension errors are and how they can occur:
The way state pensions are worked out is so complicated that many thousands of people have been paid the wrong amount for years without even realising it.
The amount of retirement pension you get usually depends on your National Insurance (NI) record.
One big source of errors has been cases where NI records have been incorrect, particularly for years spent at home with children.
This is a system known as ‘Home Responsibilities Protection’.
Alternatively, particularly for older pensioners, the amount you get can depend on the NI contributions made by your spouse.
Errors have arisen where the Government has failed to adjust the pensions of married women when their husbands retired or failed to increase pensions when someone was bereaved and lost a husband or wife.
Although the Government has spent years trying to fix these problems, there are still many thousands of people – many of them older women – on the wrong pension.
If you have always thought that your pension seems low, then it is worth contacting the Pensions Service to ask them to check, especially if you spent time at home raising children or if you were widowed and your pension didn’t change when your spouse died.