State pension shock: DWP admits it owes 250,000 retirees BILLIONS - Are YOU entitled to an extra £11,000?

Thousands of pensioners could be in line for payments worth £10,000 due to mistakes made by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

The government department has revealed some women have not been paid extra state pension payments, despite being entitled to them.

The error has been attributed to “outdated IT systems” by the National Audit Office (NAO).

Complex rules which required pension increase claims to be made manually as opposed to automatically have also been blamed.

Women who reached state pension age before April 2016 are most affected by the issue.

Figures released in November suggest a total of 31,817 underpayments were identified between January 2021 and October 2022 which are said to be worth £209.3 million collectively.

As many as 237,000 pensioners are estimated to have been affected by the DWP issue overall, and around £1.46billion has been underpaid.

DWP has highlighted three groups affected by the underpayments.

The first group is married women who should have received an upgrade to a 60% basic state pension when their husband retired.

The average payment arrears in this group amounted to £6,929, according to the DWP.

Widows who should have inherited an enhanced state pension when their spouse died is the second group.

The average arrears for this group os £10,772.

The final group is those over the age of 80 who were already in receipt of a state pension when they turned 80.

The group should have automatically upgraded to a 60% basic state pension, with the average payment arrears in this group amounting to £3,172.