DWP set to present Brits a free £5,000 enhance – see in the event you’re eligible
Thousands of women could be in for a hefty £5,000 windfall from the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP has sounded the alarm for legions of married women regarding State Pension back payments following a National Insurance contributions blunder.
The DWP is paying cash to women after HMRC spotted missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP), affecting around 210,000 women aged between their 60s and 70s – all born before 1964 – due to the updates.
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Pension guru Steve Webb revealed that HMRC has dropped a line to over 250,000 pension-age peeps who might have a claim and is now getting in touch with those under pension age.
“Anyone who has received such a letter should make sure that they respond so that their position can be checked,” he advised. You’re in the running if you snagged child benefit from 1978/1979 onwards and if your other half claimed, you might switch it up when the ‘wrong’ parent has nabbed child benefit.
But if you were paying the married women’s stamp while claiming child benefit, then HRP won’t bump up your pension. Also, if you forked out standard rate NI contributions and raked in enough dosh for it to count as a full year towards your pension while on child benefit, HRP won’t do squat for your pension.
Pension’s expert Baroness Ros Altmann commented: “So many of these poor pensioners are experiencing problems and delays because of a lack of communication between HMRC and DWP and each department believes the other is responsible.”, reports Birmingham Live.
“Sadly the DWP is the department responsible for actually paying the pensions out and they have huge backlogs of cases to deal with. It’s not clear there is any easy answer while there are so many errors which need correcting and the DWP is also currently diverting staff to the pension credit campaign to offset the loss of Winter Fuel Payments and assess claims from huge numbers of people.”
“The Winter Fuel Payment decision is adding hugely to the pressure on DWP resources which were already stretched before.”
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