Research and analysis

State Pension underpayments: progress on cases reviewed to 28 February 2022

Published 24 March 2022

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

The latest release of this information can be found in the collection of State Pension underpayments: progress on cases reviewed.

This publication is classified as management information. These documents are published in the interest of transparency and are not part of our regular Official and National Statistics Publications.

1. Purpose of the release

This analysis is published for the purpose of transparency and accountability.

It includes information on the progress of the exercise to check and correct individual cases, and the amount of arrears repaid to date.

2. Progress so far

Between 11 January 2021 and 28 February 2022 the checking process has identified 14,239 underpayments, owed total of £94.3m.

Category Cases reviewed (see note 1) Underpayments identified (see note 2) Average arrears payment (see note 3) Total amount repaid
Married (Cat BL) 38,131 5,122 £7,399 £37.9m
Widowed 11,540 3,626 £9,506 £33.9m
Over 80 (Cat D) 9,138 5,491 £4,104 £22.5m

Notes:

  1. Cases may be checked for more than one potential cause of error; therefore, an individual State Pension claim may be counted in more than one category.

  2. These are cases for which a current or historical underpayment of State Pension has been identified. This may include cases for which a corresponding overpayment of another benefit (for example, Pension Credit) has occurred as a result, meaning that there was no net underpayment to the individual as well as some cases where the customer is deceased and the Department has so far been unable to identify an estate to which to pay the arrears due.

  3. This average includes cases where the arrears amount owed is £0 due to offset of overpaid benefit.

3. Statement of application of the code of practice of statistics

The Code of Practice for Statistics (the Code) is built around 3 main concepts:

  • trustworthiness – is a about having confidence in the people and organisations that publish

  • quality – is about using data and methods that produce statistics

  • value – is about publishing statistics that support society’s needs

Trustworthiness

Progress on the SP LEAP exercise is based on DWP management information supplied through:

  1. Individually reviewed cases to find customers that have been underpaid and the amount they are owed, and to learn why they have been underpaid.

  2. The departments computer system that holds alive and deceased state pension cases, and any live state pension records from the system used before it.

Quality

DWP Analysts have engaged with operational staff to ensure the quality of the data is fit-for-purpose, and have analysed data to help understand the customers most likely to have been underpaid, whilst offering robust sense check on values against other outputs for comparable periods.

Correction rates and arrears amounts are likely to change as the exercise progresses, due to varying characteristics of the individuals affected and recruitment of additional staff to correct cases.

Value

This release provides a progress update on the State Pension LEAP exercise, together with context for those figures.

To support financial planning and management of departmental business, figures have been seen in advance by ministers and officials. This is in line with the Code, where pre-release access does not apply for releases based on routine management information – as covered in para 3.6 of the National Statistician’s guidance, February 2018.

Statistics enquiries

For statistics enquiries only, email: statepensioncorrectionexercise.managementoffice@dwp.gov.uk