State Pension Entitlement
21. Miss N complains DWP incorrectly told her she was entitled to full State Pension in 2010, which meant she missed an opportunity to claim a benefit to top up her NICs before she reached State Pension age. Miss N says that once she reached State Pension age, she did not get the full State Pension.
22. DWP’s ‘Customer Charter’ 2009 (in place at the time of the events Miss N complains about) says, ‘We will give you the right information, making it clear what you can expect from us and what your responsibilities are in return’.
23. DWP told us it does not have a copy of the phone call from 2010 because it was deleted due to its data retention policy. DWP also explained it changed its intranet platform (where all instructions and guidance content is held) around 2017 and older versions of content were not kept. This means DWP was unable to confirm what information would have been available to the agent Miss N spoke to at the time.
24. We compare what should have happened with what did happen and if any gap between the two is serious enough to suggest a failing.
25. Where there is conflicting evidence or uncertainty about what did happen, we look at whether something is more likely or not to have happened.
26. With the available evidence, we cannot say if DWP incorrectly told Miss N she was entitled to a full State Pension. This is because there is a possibility that DWP correctly advised Miss N in 2010, depending on the time she called and the policy in place at the time.
27. As we have explained in paragraph seven, women needed 39 qualifying years for the full, Basic State Pension before April 2010, and 30 qualifying years after April 2010. If Miss N contacted DWP in the time between January and April 2010 and had not made enough NICs to earn her 39th qualifying year at that stage, she may have been given wrong advice. If Miss N contacted DWP between April 2010 and December 2010, she may have been given the right advice.
28. We have looked at this carefully and because neither Miss N or DWP can confirm when the conversation was or provide any more evidence, we cannot say whether DWP incorrectly advised Miss N. This means we cannot reach a decision on whether DWP did or did not act in line with its Customer Charter. We appreciate this must be frustrating for Miss N.
29. It may help Miss N to know there is nothing in the evidence to suggest she missed an opportunity in 2010 to claim benefits that would add credits to her account. This is because her NICs record shows she was already having credits added to her account during the 2009/10 and 2010/11 tax years. In fact, Miss N had earned 43 qualifying years by April 2016, which is more than she needed before that date for the full Basic State Pension.
30. But, the new State Pension replaced the Basic and Additional State Pensions from April 2016. We think Miss N is entitled to a lower starting amount of State Pension than she expected because she did not understand how the new State Pension affected her personally, rather than because DWP gave wrong advice about her entitlement.
31. As explained in paragraphs eight to 12, people paying NICs for the first time from April 2016 needed 35 qualifying years for the full, new State Pension. For those who have earned qualifying years before April 2016, DWP calculates their entitlement under the ‘old’ and ‘new’ system rules. The starting amount of new State Pension they are entitled to is the higher of those two amounts.
32. When calculating a person’s starting amount, DWP makes a deduction to account for times when that person contracted-out of the Additional State Pension. So, even though Miss N has more than 35 qualifying years, she is not entitled to the full amount of New State Pension because she has contracted-out in the past.
33. There are things Miss N could potentially have done from April 2016 to improve her starting amount of new State Pension, had she known it was lower than she expected.
Our investigation into DWP’s communication about State Pension reform
34. In March 2024, we published an investigation into complaints that the DWP had failed to provide accurate, adequate and timely information about areas of State Pension reform.
35. Including other things, we found that research showed too many people did not understand their own situations or how the new State Pension affected them personally. The gap between awareness and understanding was highlighted by the Work and Pensions Committee and the National Audit Office. We found DWP failed to use this research and feedback to improve its service and performance.
36. We did not find that the complainants in our investigation suffered an injustice because of failings in DWP’s communication. But, we said it was possible others had lost opportunities to add qualifying years to their NICs record to improve their starting amount.
37. We asked Parliament to intervene and find an appropriate way to put things right for those affected. We shared with Parliament what we thought that may look – accepting its mistake, an apology, service improvements and a financial payment for anyone who can show they lost opportunities to add to their NICs record. The full findings of our investigation are available here.
The Government’s responses to our investigation
38. The Government published responses to our investigation in December 2024 and January 2026. It did not accept our findings and recommendations in relation to communication about the new State Pension. The Government’s responses are available here (December 2024) and here (January 2026).
Conclusion
39. We understand that Miss N may not have known that she was affected by the changes brought about by the introduction of the new State Pension until now. We also understand that knowing about those changes now may lead to new complaints that she has not made to DWP yet.
40. If Miss N decides to make a new complaint to DWP and if she asks us to look at it once DWP has replied, we may not be able to investigate any part of it that is linked to our investigation into the communication of new State Pension reform. This is because we have already investigated it and reached a decision.
Complaint handling
41. Miss N complains about DWP’s complaint handing. She says DWP failed to reply to many complaints she made so she had to take it up with her MP to get a response.
42. As we have said, we can see Miss N first made her complaint with DWP by phone and letter in September 2022. When Miss N did not get a reply, she contacted DWP again in May 2023 but did not get a reply. Miss N’s MP contacted DWP in July 2023. DWP replied to Miss N’s complaint in August 2023.
43. DWP accepted it did not reply to Miss N’s complaints and paid her £50. DWP explained this was in recognition of a mistake and expression of apology.
44. DWP’s ‘Customer Charter’ (2013) says it will deal with requests the first time it is contacted, tell complainants what will happen next and keep them updated. Miss N contacted DWP three times to make her complaint but did not get a response.
45. This suggests something has gone wrong because DWP did not deal with Miss N’s request first time. It also did not update her about what would happen next and when she could expect to get a reply. We next looked at how this error affected Miss N and what DWP has done to put it right.
46. Miss N told us how DWP’s actions affected her mental health. During our investigation, Miss N explained she was frustrated and stressed because of DWP’s lack of response and she felt she had no other option but to get her MP involved.
47. We understand it would have been frustrating for Miss N to keep contacting DWP and to have to wait 11 months for a reply.
48. Our Principles for Remedy say, ‘Where maladministration or poor service has led to injustice or hardship, public bodies should try to offer a remedy that returns the complainant to the position they would have been in otherwise. If that is not possible, the remedy should compensate them appropriately.’
49. DWP’s guidance on financial compensation says payments can be considered where the customer has suffered injustice or hardship because of poor service. While the guidance says payments usually range from £50 to £500, it does not explain how a figure is decided on.
50. We looked at our Guidance on Financial Remedy. We would put the impact of Miss N’s complaint at level two on our Severity of Injustice (SOI) scale. Level two complaints are where the complainant has experienced some distress, worry or annoyance but this does not affect their ability to live a normal life for a period of one to two weeks, to about six months. Cases of poor complaint handling are where there is a delay of more than a few weeks, up to one year.
51. We have put Miss N’s complaint in the lower end of level two because there were two small cases of poor complaint handling which led to her experiencing frustration, upset and not knowing why she was getting less State Pension than she was expecting. This went on for 11 months.
52. We think an apology and a financial payment between £120 and £550 is the right amount to put this right and be in line with level two on our SOI scale. DWP has apologised and already made a payment of £50. We do not think £50 is enough so we have asked DWP to make an extra payment of £100, to recognise how long Miss N was affected.
53. DWP has agreed to this. We think that with the payment it has already made, this will put this right for Miss N, and we are not recommending anything more.