Hundreds of thousands of state pensioners are still collecting less per week in their state pension than they should be entitled to thanks to historic government errors which reached a staggering £390million by April 2026. According to the Department for Work and Pensions’ latest Fraud and Error in the Benefit System report, Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) errors account for 60% of underpayments in National Insurance contribution records.
National Insurance records are used to determine an individual’s state pension eligibility and calculate the amount you receive upon retirement. Usually earned through work, you need about 35 years of records to qualify for maximum state pension payments. Women are most affected by the DWP records errors, such as those claiming Child Benefit before May 2000 but whose National Insurance number wasn’t correctly linked to their claims. According to the DWP’s data, the average back payment is worth £7,589.
HMRC began issuing letters to pensioners after the DWP found that some people’s state pension payments had been incorrectly calculated, due to missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) between 1978 and 2010.
In turn, this led to National Insurance errors in their records managed by HMRC.
The DWP and HMRC’s Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP) then identified those missing HRP on their records and is still issuing letters to those who could be entitled to money back, urging them to claim.
But you don’t get the money automatically and instead you need to apply via gov.uk.
A total of 493,000 people have already used the online tool to check if they are missing HRP and those who were eligible for a payment will get the money by the end of 2025.
But as many as 370,000 are still being urged to claim the money they’re owed.
By the end of September, HMRC had processed 37,289 applications from pensioners and 5,428 from those close to pension age and £42million in payments have already been issued.
The DWP says: “Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) reduced the number of qualifying years you needed to get the full basic State Pension by up to 22 years.
“To get a full basic State Pension a woman needed 39 qualifying years and a man 44 qualifying years.
“You may have been entitled to Additional State Pension if you qualified for HRP because you:
were looking after a sick or disabled person (including a child over the age of 6) who was getting certain benefits”
“To claim Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP), you can apply online or by post. You can also apply to transfer HRP from someone else.”