HMRC alerts 210,000 people to possible £5,000 entitlement from DWP pension crash

HMRC is reaching out to 210,000 people who could be entitled to a £5,000 windfall because of a State Pension blunder by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The error predominantly affects women in their 60s and 70s who claimed child benefit between 1978 and 2000 because their National Insurance credits needed for State Pension entitlement were not applied correctly.

A DWP spokesman commented: “The action we are taking now will correct the historical underpayments made by successive governments. We are fully committed to addressing these errors, not identified in previous governments, as quickly as possible.”

“We have established a dedicated team and committed significant resources to completing this.”

Before 2010, these credits were called Home Responsibility Protection (HRP), which helped parents and carers reduce the number of years needed to qualify for the State Pension.

In cases where Child Benefit was claimed without including a National Insurance number in the claim, HRP credits may have been recorded incorrectly. An estimated 210,000 people could be affected by the oversight, 60,000 of whom have already died, leaving their families eligible to claim any outstanding sums, reports Birmingham Live.#

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Pensioners are at the forefront of contact, with ministers previously indicating that most people affected by the error should be contacted by April next year. Typical compensation is around £5,000, although some cases can see significantly higher sums.

Those eligible for compensation include people who claimed child benefit in their own name (rather than their spouse or partner) and had a child under 16 during the whole financial year in question. In addition, you must not have paid the “reduced stamp duty” for married women to qualify.