Thousands of state pensioners owed £5,000 - are you due a DWP back payment?

State pensioners have been urged to check if they could be owed £5,000 in back payments.

Some 210,000 older Britons, mostly women, could be owed around £5,000 each because they were missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) on their National Insurance (NI) record.

All those affected by the error should receive any back payments by the end of next year. HMRC started sending out letters to those who may have been affected in September last year. The DWP is working through cases to issue any back payments.

The DWP estimates that between £300million and £1.5billion was underpaid due to HRP errors.

The HRP scheme was designed to protect a parent or carer's entitlement to the state pension while they were out of work, with the scheme replaced by NI credits in 2010.

A person can make a claim on behalf of a relative who has now deceased, with more information on how to claim available on the gov.uk website here.

You may still be able to apply for HRP, for full tax years between 1978 and 2010, if any of the following were true:

• You were claiming Child Benefit for a child under 16
• You were caring for a child with your partner who claimed Child Benefit instead of you
• You were getting Income Support because you were caring for someone who was sick or disabled
• You were caring for a sick or disabled person who was claiming certain benefits.

You can also apply if, for a full tax year between 2003 and 2010, you were either:

• a foster carer
• caring for a friend or family member’s child (‘kinship carer’) in Scotland

From the tax year starting in 2010, HRP applications had to include a National Insurance number, so if your claim dates from this point onwards, you will not have been affected.

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