Research and analysis

State Pension underpayments: progress on cases reviewed to 28 February 2023

Published 23 March 2023

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

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.

This publication updates the previous release of 29 November 2022 on the number of cases checked as part of a State Pensions correction exercise which began in January 2021.

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 2023, the checking process has identified 46,716 underpayments, owed a total of £300.1 million.

Category	Cases reviewed (see [footnote 1] and [footnote 2])	Underpayments identified (see [footnote 3])	Average arrears payment (see [footnote 4])	Total amount repaid
Married (Cat BL)	82,225	22,276	£6,630	£147.7 million
Widowed	54,150	9,928	£11,521	£113.2 million
Over 80 (Cat D)	37,163	14,512	£2,710	£39.3 million

3. Statement of compliance with the code of practice of statistics

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

• trustworthiness – is about having confidence in the people and organisations that publish statistics
• quality – is about using data and methods that produce statistics
• value – is about publishing statistics that support society’s needs

Trustworthiness

Progress on the State Pension Legal Entitlement and Administrative Practices (LEAP) exercise is based on DWP management information supplied through:

• individually reviewed cases to find customers that have been underpaid and the amount they are owed, and to learn why they have been underpaid
• the department’s computer system that holds alive and deceased State Pension cases

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 a robust sense check of 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

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. Cases reviewed includes cases which have been deemed out of scope of the LEAP exercise through an automated process. ↩

3. 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. ↩

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