State Pension age changes: Full list of women who could get £10,000 DWP payout

WASPI campaigners at a rally in London in June 2023

The Women Against Statement Pension Inequality (WASPI) group is waiting for the outcome of an investigation into whether women deprived of their full state pensions could be entitled to compensation.

They’ve claimed that many had their retirement plans upset because they weren’t warned in time about changes to their pension age. WASPI hopes that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman might recommend a compensation figure of £10,000 or more for each person affected.

Scottish National Party MP Alan Brown told the House of Commons he thinks this would be the “most appropriate” payout from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The ombudsman’s final reports will reveal if there was any wrongdoing and, if so, what financial compensation should be offered. So, who are those impacted by these State Pension age increases?

These controversial changes started with the 1995 Conservative Government’s State Pension Act. It upped the State Pension age for women from 60 to 65, matching the men’s age. Then, the 2011 Pension Act pushed the State Pension age further to 66 for both men and women.

WASPI has made it clear who’s been affected and who could get compensation. They said: “Because of the way the increases were brought in, women born in the 1950s – on or after 6th April 1950 to 5th April 1960 – have been hit particularly hard. Significant changes to the age we receive our State Pension have been imposed upon us with a lack of appropriate notification, with little or no notice and much faster than we were promised some of us have been hit by more than one increase.”

In total, 3.8 million women are suffering because of this. WASPI also says that since 2015, about 270,000 of these women have passed away without getting any money back for the pension changes they faced. This has helped the Treasury save over £4 billion, according to campaigners.

WASPI points out that letters about the changes were sent 14 years after the 1995 Pensions Act to women born from April 6, 1951, to April 5, 1953. Many of these women got a letter telling them their retirement age was going up just one year before they were supposed to get their pension. And lots of others only had two, three, four or five years’ warning.

WASPI highlights: “Women were given as little as one year’s notice of up to a six-year increase to their State Pension age, compared to men who received six year’s notice of a one-year rise to their State Pension age. Many women report receiving no letter ever and others say letters were sent to the wrong address despite notifying the DWP of the address change.”

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