I was terrified I’d have to sell my house after my husband died due to £4,000 pension mistake

AFTER her husband Rodney died, Celia Oxspring, 78, was terrified that she would have to sell the house they’d shared for 35 years.

While Rodney was alive the couple, from Derby, had £650 a week to live on, mostly from his wages as a ground worker.

This was replaced by sick pay when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in February last year. 

But when Rodney died in October, aged 65, Celia’s income plummeted.

She had only her state pension payment of £99.70 a week.

“We were together for nearly 40 years so it was a huge loss. 

“Facing the financial stress on top of it all was overwhelming,” she said. 

“I was using my savings to pay the bills but I didn’t know what would happen to me when they ran out. 

“It was horrendous. I thought I’d have to sell our home in a mad rush just to get by.”

Celia, a retired pensions and payroll clerk, thought she was entitled to a higher amount when she was widowed. 

She called the Pension Service and wrote twice asking for her pension to be reviewed. 

Each time, she was cut off before she could speak to anyone and her letters went unanswered.

Finally, after Sun Money intervened, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) increased her payments to £174.46 a week - a boost of almost £3,900 a year. 

It also paid £1,345.68 to cover the months since Rodney’s death. 

Systemic failure

“I’m so grateful to Sun Money for sorting this out,” she said. 

“It’s disgusting that I had to chase the government so many times and had no acknowledgement. 

“I worry that other women in this situation might not even realise that they are owed money or they would just give up trying because the government makes it so difficult.”

Celia is one of more than 100,000 women who may have been underpaid by around £1billion in total.

An estimated 134,000 pensioners, mainly women, could still be owed money after a catalogue of errors resulting from outdated computer systems. 

The first error was first uncovered by campaigner and former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb in 2020.  

But two years later, Sun Money is STILL hearing from women and families chasing cash. 

Last month, MPs warned that worried pensioners who may have been underpaid their state pension are being turned away by government call centres. 

Our postbag and email inbox has been full of letters from readers who have been unable to get answers. 

Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which published a damning report on the scandal in January, said: “This was a major systemic failure over many years. 

“There are echoes of Windrush in this, where the government hasn’t really got to grips with the reality of the impact of what it has done.”

The average sum owed to the pensioners for blunders dating back to the 1980s is £9,000 - but the highest payout is £128,000 for backdated payments spanning decades. 

In January 2021, the DWP started checking hundreds of thousands of pension records to see if people have been underpaid. 

If you have, it will contact you directly but it could take until the end of 2023 to reach everyone. 

You can ask the DWP to check your pension - although it won’t speed up the process.