A record benefits blunder saw dead pensioners receive £170million in payments last year.
The payments typically result from a delay between a pensioner’s death and the point at which their relatives inform the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
The scale of the problem has raised fresh questions about the government’s ability to prevent public money flowing to those no longer alive to receive it.
Over the past five years, a total of £673million has been paid out to pensioners who were already deceased, The Telegraph reports.
The DWP has managed to claw back just £348million of that amount — barely more than half.
Roughly £240million has been permanently written off, classified as debt that cannot be recovered.
For the 2025-26 financial year alone, some £16.5million of the erroneous payments has already been written off by the department.
The remaining outstanding balance continues to sit on the government’s books, with no guarantee that it will ever be recouped from the estates or families of those who died.
Bereaved families are required to notify the DWP within five days of a death occurring or a body being found
|
GETTY
Bereaved families are required to notify the DWP within five days of a death occurring or a body being found.
However, the inevitable gap between someone passing away and that notification reaching the department means payments frequently continue after death.
Crucially, the DWP lacks any legal authority to demand repayment from grieving relatives.
Civil servants are limited to writing letters requesting that families voluntarily return the funds.
The DWP lacks any legal authority to demand repayment from grieving relatives
|
PA
When a death goes unreported, the department categorises the resulting overpayment as either fraud or claimant error.
Yet even in such cases, there is no statutory mechanism compelling families to hand back the money.
Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, a Liberal Democrat who held the role during the Coalition Government, cautioned that adopting a forceful approach towards recently bereaved families would be poorly received by the public.
He also noted that overpayments are likely to climb further as pensioner numbers and payment rates continue to rise.
Shimeon Lee, a policy analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, acknowledged that the losses represent a relatively small proportion of total pension spending but described them as a “serious weakness” in the system.
He told The Telegraph: “Taxpayers will be shocked that hundreds of millions have been paid into the accounts of people who had already died.
“Even if these losses are a small share of the pension bill, the scale of unrecovered cash points to serious weaknesses in the system.”
A DWP spokesman said: “It is DWP policy to recover all debt where it is reasonable and cost-effective to do so.
“We encourage anyone who has recently lost a loved one to use our Tell Us Once service, which makes it easy to notify us and other government services of a death in one simple step.
“Once we’ve been notified, we act quickly to update our records and make sure benefits only go to those who are entitled to them.”