I paid almost £5,000 to boost my state pension last year, but it’s been nearly five months since and my payments haven’t increased.
I got a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in November last year, which said that I had gaps in my national insurance record, but I could pay to fill it in and increase my state pension payments.
My weekly state pension is £169.91. I decided to pay for six missing years, which cost me £4,893, and my weekly payments would go up to £207.83.
I was told it would take five to eight weeks to get my higher payments. By mid-January, eight weeks had been and gone. I decided to call the DWP in February to ask what the hold-up was.
The DWP assured me that I would get my increased payments, and a back payment to cover the amount of time I had waited.
My last state pension payment was at the beginning of April, but I’m still waiting for it to reflect the higher amount I am now entitled to.
Christine, Merseyside
Lucy Andrews writes
You shouldn’t be waiting months for your top-up to increase your state pension payments. You are right to be exasperated and you are not alone in your frustrations. We have also heard from other readers facing long waits — in one case nine months — for their national insurance record to be fully updated.
For many people topping up your national insurance record to qualify for a higher state pension is sensible. Experts say you usually make your money back within four years, so in the long-run it’s seriously worth considering (although it will not be right for everyone).
You need 35 full years of national insurance contributions to get the maximum new state pension and must have ten years of contributions to get anything at all.
How much it costs to buy a year’s credit varies by year, but it’s usually about £800-900. It would cost £907.40 to fill in the whole of the 2023-24 tax year, for example, and this would boost your state pension by £328.64 a year — an extra £8,400 over 20 years, assuming that the state pension increases 2.5 per cent annually, the minimum rise under the triple lock.
The way that state pension top-ups are handled is a little convoluted. You pay the money to HM Revenue & Customs, and once the payment has been processed it should then let the DWP know so it can boost your state pension payments accordingly. With two departments involved, this process is not always seamless.
I asked the DWP to investigate why you had been waiting so long for the correct payments. It didn’t explain why there was a delay, but I suspect it is because there had been a recent influx of applications.
A window for plugging national insurance gaps going back to 2006 closed on April 5, and anyone who missed this deadline can now only fill in gaps from the past six years. So lots of people were rushing to get their applications in ahead of this deadline.
The good news is that the DWP has now processed your case and increased your state pension to the correct amount, which is £216.33 a week for this tax year, and gave you a backdated payment of £758.40 to cover what you should have been paid from November to the end of the last tax year in April.
It said: “We apologise for the level of service provided to Christine and have increased her state pension.”
You told me you are now receiving the correct amount of state pension and were grateful the issue had been rectified.
Anyone considering filling in gaps in their national insurance should first check that it will make financial sense to do so. If you are young and working, in poor health or eligible for pension credit, you could be left out of pocket if you top up your contributions.
• Should I buy national insurance years to top-up my state pension?
Lloyds has been sending me someone else’s letters for 12 years
I am at my wits’ end trying to stop Lloyds from sending someone else’s letters to my address. I am not a customer with the bank and this has been happening for 12 years.
Since 2013 Lloyds has been posting a stranger’s letters to my house. It began two years after I moved into the property and I do not know who the recipient is, nor have any connection to them whatsoever.
I must have been sent at least 25 letters, and each time I have posted them back to Lloyds — because I don’t want to put this mysterious customer’s sensitive bank information at risk by binning them.
I’ve called, emailed, and used Lloyds’ online messaging platform countless times to request the letters stop and to complain about the situation, but to no avail. Lloyds has told me that it can’t discuss the issue because I am not the account holder — yet it sees fit to keep sending letters linked to the account to my home.
I’m beginning to feel quite harassed.
Cate, East Sussex
Lucy Andrews writes
What a ridiculous situation you have found yourself in, one that has wasted so much of your time in trying to rectify.
It is not just the annoyance of getting unwanted letters, you have also been inconvenienced for more than decade going to a post box or the nearest Lloyds branch to hand them back. It is honourable of you to do so to ensure someone else’s sensitive information remains safe and secure, although you are understandably tired of it.
Banks have a regulatory obligation to send important correspondence, such as updated terms and conditions or interest rate changes if they do not benefit the customer, in writing either by email or letter. If customers don’t have an email listed with the bank, it will send a letter to the address it has on file.
Lloyds had its hands tied to a certain extent in this situation, because it had to follow regulatory practices. Thankfully after my involvement the bank finally managed to make contact with the mysterious customer. It has updated its records and has assured me that there will now be no more letters sent to your address.
I think your case has identified a clear issue with the rules. Not least when a customer dies, the next occupant of a property should not be subject to years of unwanted letters.
There is also the very real risk of sensitive personal and financial data going astray — so much fraud takes place online these days, but there is still a risk if physical letters fall into the wrong hands.
If a previous resident is not responding to their bank and you keep getting sent their letters, or a previous occupier has died, which is often the cause of these problems, you will need to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the data protection regulation.
It is also a great reminder for us all to keep our banks and other financial companies up to date with any changes to our personal circumstances. This can be done easily in most cases by going into a local bank branch, logging into an app, or calling a company’s customer service line.
Katherine Denham is away
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