Royal Mail’s pension blunder will cost me £77 every month

P.A.F. writes: At the age of 70, I have been informed by Royal Mail Pensions that I have been overpaid for five years, and am liable to repay £77 per month. It has given the reason as ‘maladministration’. It claims I was notified that my job pension would be reduced when my state pension began. I never received such a letter.

Surely, if it was sent, officials were aware that a reduction was due and it was their responsibility to carry it out? THIS is a double hammer blow by Royal Mail Pensions. It was bad enough that you were told you had been overpaid to the tune of £4,619 and that the pension scheme expected you to repay this.

But to make matters worse, when you appealed, the head of the scheme sent a poorly worded letter that upheld your complaint, admitted there had been maladministra- tion for years and offered £50 compensation. You read this with relief, believing the debt had been cancelled, but a week later a further letter made clear that the debt stood and would be collected by taking £77 a month off your pension.

Since employees cannot calculate their own pension entitlement, I asked Royal Mail why its scheme should not bear responsibility for its own incorrect arithmetic.

Technically, the scheme has been the responsibility of the Government’s Cabinet Office since 2012, in a move to take financial liabilities away from the business, so the reply came in a joint statement from both. They insist that writing off the overpayment ‘would negatively impact the overall scheme’.

But the better news is that they have cut the repayments to £109 every three months, instead of £77 a month, and you have told me you are happy with this.