Pensioners have been implored to check a compensation claim over a Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) bungle affecting thousands after WASPI complaints. The DWP has been slammed over more failures of communication in the wake of the WASPI campaign.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), Rebecca Hilsenrath, said the department was “failing to learn from its mistakes”. It comes after a state pensioneo was not told for eight years about a change to his payments that would leave him £3,000 a year worse off.
She urged the more than 10,000 pensioners who were on the scheme before it ended in 2020 to contact the DWP if they’d fallen victim to the gaffe. It comes after Adrian Furnival, 82, found out in 2018 via an annual statement from the DWP that he would no longer receive Adult Dependency Increase (ADI) in two years.
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The change would make him over £250 a month worse off. He had been living in Brittany since 1994 with his wife Sheila, 67. People who lived in the UK had been told about the change to ADI payments eight years earlier, in 2010.
The PHSO urged the DWP to pay £675 compensation after it found that the DWP failed to properly communicate the changes to Mr Furnival, and should have told him about the changes in 2010. The number of those who were living abroad and entitled to ADI is unknown but in May 2019, a year before ADI ended, DWP told Parliament that 10,817 people were still in receipt of ADI. The Ombudsman recommended that DWP should also provide a comparable remedy to anyone who approaches the Department in a similar situation.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are committed to supporting all pensioners both in the UK and abroad and we keep our processes under constant review. We will be considering what we can learn from this report.”