A state pensioner has been fighting for almost a year over an underpayment of £17,700 | Personal Finance | Finances

A state pensioner went before the DWP for almost a year to secure £17,700 in arrears.

Retired executive Christine Plant owed the amount because her National Insurance (NI) record did not include Home Responsibilitie Protection (HRP), which is believed to affect hundreds of thousands of women.

She had to fight both HMRC and DWP, making several long phone calls, to finally get the amount she was owed.

The HRP scheme ran from 1978 to 2010, with the HRP added to an individual’s record to top up National Insurance contributions towards the State Pension while they were unemployed and caring for a child, sick or disabled person. The missing HRP problem mainly concerns women who were not working while caring for children.

In Ms Plant’s case, she was due a £28-a-week increase in her state pension, increasing her entitlement to £171 a week, which resulted in her arrears of more than £17,700, This Is Money reports.

She first contacted HMRC in November 2023 because she believed she might be owed payments for the time she was not working and raising her children.

The tax authority responded to her in the same month, confirming that she was owed the money, but she had difficulty meeting the deadline.

She called three times and was told her case would be marked “urgent,” but heard nothing more. She once made a three-hour phone call and was passed around various departments, but to no avail.

She said: “I called HMRC again. I said it’s been a year. I said if I owed you money, you wouldn’t have waited so long.”

Her case was finally resolved 11 months after she first contacted HMRC with her query.

A DWP spokesman told This Is Money: “We apologize for the delay in processing Ms Plant’s award. If errors do occur, we try to resolve them as quickly as possible.”

The government started sending letters regarding HRP over a year ago. Around 210,000 pensioners will receive part of the underpayments totaling £1.5 billion, with each case owing an average of £5,000.

When a person dies, a representative can make a claim on their behalf.

There was a tool on the government website that you could use to check if you were eligible for Home Responsibilities Protection.

The online HRP tool can be used to claim HRP for full tax years (April 6 to April 5) between 1978 and 2010 if any of the following applies:

• you applied for family allowance for a child under 16 years of age
• you looked after a child with your partner, who received child benefit instead of you
• you were receiving Low Income Benefit because you were caring for someone who was sick or disabled
• you took care of a sick or disabled person receiving certain benefits.