Delay on women’s pension rebate

Tens of thousands of retired women are going to have to wait up to two-and-a-half years for a pension rebate after being underpaid by the Government for more than a decade.

The Department for Work and

Pensions is hiring a 500-strong team to trawl over an estimated £3bn of underpayments after a blunder.

The error affects women whose husbands reached pension age before 2008.

These women were unknowingly entitled to a boost in payments by up to 60%.

Repayments began this year and Pensions Minister Guy Opperman, pictured inset left, said 360 staff will be recruited to add to 150 already hired.

He said it would “speed up” repayments but added he now had “the aim to complete the exercise by the end of 2023”.