DWP state pension boost: Thousands get back payments up to £11,905 - full list of those affected

The DWP has already completed correction exercises for married women, civil partners, and those over 80 years old.

Progress remains on track for widowed cases to be resolved before the new year, according to the DWP's latest update.

There are three broad categories of State Pension underpayments:

• Cases covered by the State Pension Underpayments (LEAP) exercise
• Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) cases where HRP has not been recorded accurately on National Insurance records
• Cases where National Insurance credits need to be updated for people who were claiming Universal Credit.

The LEAP exercise, which was launched after the DWP discovered in 2020 that many individuals had not received automatic increases to their State Pension as legally required.

The initiative has become the DWP's largest underpayment correction exercise to date.

DWP Leap excercise helps to identify where state pension underpayments may have occurred in respect of the following groups of people:

• Category BL (Cat BL) - People who are married or in a civil partnership who reached State Pension age before April 6, 2016 and should be entitled to a Category BL uplift based on their partner’s National Insurance contributions.
• Missed conversions - People who have been widowed and their State Pension was not increased to include any amounts they are entitled to inherit from their late husband, wife or civil partner.
• Category D (Cat D) - People who reach age 80 and who are getting some Basic State Pension but less than the £85.00 (in 2022-23) and may therefore, subject to satisfying the appropriate residency conditions, be entitled to Cat D State Pension of £101.55 a week (2024/25 weekly rate)

The widowed category saw 39,706 underpayments discovered from 445,188 reviewed cases, with the highest average payment of £11,905.

For those over 80 years old (Category D), 33,437 underpayments were found from 90,720 cases reviewed, with average arrears of £2,202

A similar exercise by HMRC has found that between January 8, 2024 and the end of September a further 5,344 underpayments have been identified through the HRP corrections exercise, with people owed state pension underpayments of £7,859, on average

The DWP estimates that errors in recording HRP led to underpayments between £300million and £1.5n of state pension. Over 370,000 letters have been sent by HMRC to potentially affected individuals, primarily women in their 60s and 70s.

HMRC is using NI records to identify as many people as possible who might have been entitled to HRP between 1978 and 2010 and have no HRP on their NI record.

After May 2000, it became mandatory to include a NI number on claims so people claiming after this point will not have been affected.

HMRC is also actively reviewing National Insurance records to identify individuals who might have been entitled to HRP between 1978 and 2010.

Some individuals who received Universal Credit may have missing National Insurance Credits on their records held by HMRC, potentially affecting their state pension.

This issue occurred between 2017-18 and 2022-23, when Universal Credit entitlement information could not be processed by the National Insurance Recording System.

The DWP implemented a manual system with HMRC during this period to update affected records. These system issues have now been resolved, allowing claims data to be successfully processed.

The quickest way to check for underpayments is to contact the Pension Service on 0800 731 0469, with lines open 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday.