DWP overpayment errors put 217,000 state pensioners in debt

Hundreds of thousands of pensioners have been saddled with more than £100million of debt as the Government admitted to widespread "official errors" in state pension payments. In 2024/25 alone, more than 220,000 claimants were overpayed around £109million, which is money the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is asking to be repaid.

According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by The i Paper, only 2,861 overpayments have been written off by the DWP, equating to around £3.3million. This leaves around 217,000 pensioners in debt, which equates to approximately £1,160 per claimant in 2024/25, based on a sampling of a limited number of claims.

According to the DWP, an “official error” overpayment is one which “is not as a result of a failure to disclose or misrepresentation by the claimant but instead as a result of a departmental error”.

A spokesperson for the department said it was commited to tackle error, debt and fraud through a new bill, introduced to the commons in January. The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill includes measures to prevent overpayments and intends to help save taxpayer money.

They said the was the "biggest crackdown in a generation", and was set to save the taxpayer £1.5billion over the next five years.

Under the Bill, one measure requires banks to share limited data on claimants who might be receiving overpayments. The DWP will not have access to their bank accounts.

The Express has contacted DWP for comment.