A 69-year-old retired nurse whose £3,200 state pension top-up went missing for three and a half years was driven to despair over ever seeing her money again.
All her attempts to get the Department for Work and Pensions to track down her large payment had failed – one staff member even put the phone down on her – and an official letter of complaint in early 2023 was ignored.
When Jean Sargeant contacted This is Money in desperation, she told us: ‘I have chronic health conditions, some of which are exacerbated by stress. I cannot now bring myself to phone again as it is too hard.’
We have been deluged by readers complaining about state pension top-ups cash vanishing after a huge rush ahead of a recent April deadline to fill older gaps in records.
But we have also heard from others like Ms Sargeant, whose money disappeared years ago into the system run jointly by DWP and HMRC – yet they couldn’t find any Government staff member willing or able to help them.
State pension top-ups: They can give a generous boost to retirement income if you buy the correct years
Another reader, Ian Warrender, 71, whose problems buying top-ups we covered in a previous story, is still waiting for a £1,200 refund from HMRC six months after requesting one, despite This is Money’s efforts to chase it up for him.
A Government spokesperson says: ‘We apologise to those who have not received the level of service they should have in these cases.
‘When errors are made, we are committed to resolving them as quickly as possible.’
Steve Webb, a former Pensions Minister who is now a partner at pension consultant LCP, says the readers whose cases we highlight today are victims of having the whole top-up process split between two Government departments.
‘Somehow the taxpayer just gets lost in the cracks between HMRC and DWP,’ he says. Read further comments below from Steve Webb, This is Money’s pensions columnist.
The DWP and HMRC are currently dealing with a massive backlog of top-ups payments after hundreds of thousands of older people rushed to take advantage of a special deal – before it ran out in April – that would increase their retirement income.
This allowed people to fill gaps in state pension records going back to 2006, rather than just the past six years.
Some pensioners say when they phoned up government helplines, staff informed them they faced a six to eight-month wait.
One expat was told by HMRC it was trying to clear UK residents’ cases within eight weeks, but the international team was taking an estimated 61 weeks to deal with top-ups bought from overseas. We have since heard from another expat who learned that they face a wait of 71 weeks.
And we understand there is a separate backlog for getting a refund if you paid the wrong amount.
How did a £3,200 top-ups payment disappear for over three years?
Jean Sargeant, who lives in London, paid thousands of pounds in late 2021 after receiving a letter from the Government.
This set out the years and payments it said would ‘count towards’ her state pension.
When she called the DWP to double check which years were best to buy, she was told by a staff member ‘any’ from the list on the letter would do.
However, Ms Sargeant, who is now 69, did not get the expected boost to her state pension.
All her subsequent attempts to find out what had happened to her money got nowhere – including a formal complaint letter sent in March 2023 – and during one phone call a DWP staff member hung up on her.
Due to her poor health, which is worsened by stress, Ms Sargeant eventually gave up making any further phone calls to the Government.
After This is Money demanded an investigation, it turned out she had been misled by the DWP’s original letter to buy years before 2016 that would make no difference to her state pension.
This error is not uncommon, because if you already had 30 qualifying years before a rule change in 2016, buying earlier ones might not improve your payments further.
The Government acted to sort this out after our intervention, and switched Ms Sargeant’s top-ups to years after 2016 that would make a difference.
She received an state pension increase from £185 to £212 a week, and £4,400 to cover underpayments going back to October 2021.
However, other than the blanket apology in the Government’s quote above to readers whose top-ups problems we have recently covered, Ms Sargeant tells us it has not said sorry to her personally for the years of worry she experienced about her missing money.
It has also never answered her complaint made more than two years ago.
She says: ‘In line with their own complaints resolution procedures I am entitled to a) an apology and b) an explanation of what went wrong.
‘I also feel I should be considered for what they term a special payment with specific regard to the maladministration of my pension, the length of time to resolve the complaint and the impact it has had on my pre-existing health conditions.
‘There is also the potential financial loss of savings if I had been paid correctly from the onset. They have never acknowledged the letter of complaint I sent on 8 March 2023 which I was told they have on file.’
This is Money has urged DWP to look into Ms Sargeant’s complaint and consider offering her redress. However, we have received no response to our requests about this, and she now intends to go to her MP for help.
An ‘extreme backlog’ for refunds if you make a top-ups error
Ian Warrender, 71, has been trying for months to get a £1,200 refund for state pension top-ups he bought in October.
He made the common error explained above of buying pre-2016 years without realising they might not improve his state pension.
The retired architect from Hampshire wrote to HMRC asking for a refund in February, and after we covered his case in a recent story has repeated this request by phone and email many times but got nowhere.
‘They said there was an extreme backlog for refunds as there many many people applying like me,’ he told us after one of his calls to HMRC.
After This is Money raised his case it got passed to the complaints department.
After an exchange of emails about his situation, Mr Warrender was told a transfer had been made to his bank account.
However, it did not arrive and at the time of writing he is still waiting for a refund.
Regarding the experiences of our readers, Steve Webb says: ‘The letter Mrs Sargent received about missing years would be read by any normal person as an encouragement to fill gaps with the assumption that this would improve her pension.
‘But it turns out that the years she bought had no impact on her pension.
‘Whilst it is good that they have now been moved to years which will boost her pension she should never have been in this position in the first place, and it should not have taken the intervention of This is Money to finally get matters resolved.’
Webb went on: ‘Mr Warrender has had to make multiple calls to DWP and HMRC and seems no nearer to receiving a refund six months after he wrote to request one.’
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