Government faces legal action over women who've lost out on pensions

Hundreds of thouands of women weren't told their state pension age had changed, meaning just two years' notice of a £36,000 loss

Chrissie Hynde is one many thousands of women reaching 65 in 2016 (BBC)

Women face losing around £36,000 worth of pension because they were given inadequate notice of crucial changes to the State pension age. As a result many are facing real hardship, warns retirement expert Alan Higham.

He believes the government has left hundreds of thousands of woman in financial risk by not making sure they knew that they would have to wait for a State pension payout. And he warns the government faces legal action from campaigners demanding fairness and justice.

“People cannot be left high and dry in real hardship as a result. The Government must act on the complaints its failures generate,” Mr Higham said. “The risk of doing nothing is a class action which could cost the tax payer a small fortune to compensate all affected while prolonging huge suffering.”

The 1995 Pensions Act increased women's State pension age from 60 to age 65 to bring it in line with men. Any woman due to reach age 60 before 2010 kept her pension age. Women born after 6 April 1950 saw their State pension age gradually rise until those born after 6 April 1955 had their State pension paid from age 65 just like men.

But the Government waited more than fifteen years to inform people personally: it recently admitted that the first time it wrote to women was between April 2009 and March 2011. That means a woman born in March 1953 could have found out for the first time at age 58 that she was not going to get her State pension until age 63. That’s effectively two year's notice of a loss of £18,000 of pension income, Mr Higham points out.

Then it wasn't until 2001 that the Government included details of the revised state pension age in pension statements requested by people. Women who received the statements claim the pension age change was disclosed simply as the year the pension was due to be paid and buried in text in the middle of the statement.

Mr Higham says it’s unclear when the Government first wrote to women born between April 1953 and April 1955 whose pension age had been moved in 1995 from age 60 to between age 63 and age 65. “My reading of the Government's response is that no letter was sent about this change, possibly because a further change was in the pipeline. Their story becomes even worse,” he says.

For women born in April 1955 the law changed her pension age from 60 to age 65 in 1995 and then to age 66 in 2011. But she might only have found any of this out from the Government for the first time at age 58 in 2013. That’s effectively just two years' notice of a loss of £36,000 of pension, Mr Higham says.“If the Government waits until it is sued for the losses caused by inadequate notice then everyone given inadequate notice could receive some compensation at huge cost to the taxpayer if their case succeeds,” he says.

“My main concern is for those in dire financial hardship: women with little or no income living on benefits, reliant on charity or taking no help while running down their savings with only years of poverty ahead of them. Decency and justice demands they are assisted immediately.”

The campaigning group Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has been petitioning the Government to reverse its decision not to award transitional financial help to those affected at petition.parliament.uk/petitions/110776

Alan Higham is available at his website www.pensionschamp.com