British pensioners living overseas are being left without their state pension payments due to serious administrative failings at the Department for Work and Pensions.
John Ward, 77, a retired advertising copywriter, has had his payments wrongly suspended twice within a single year, despite following all official procedures.
Ward moved to The Gambia in 2021 to carry out charitable work during retirement. He has since gone without his £215 weekly pension for a total of twelve months.
His first suspension came in February 2024 when the DWP claimed it had not received his life certificate, a document required every two years to confirm that overseas pensioners are still living.
Ward spent three weeks arranging for the certificate to be signed by an official witness. The process cost him £500.
Even after submitting the form, his payments were halted again later that year.
His experience reflects wider concerns about how the DWP manages overseas claims, raising questions about the security of thousands of British pensioners living abroad.
Despite posting the completed certificate, the department maintained they never received it and continued withholding his payments.
Ward told The Telegraph the situation is “a complete joke”, stating: “They refused to accept that they had received the life certificate.”
State pension at risk as thousands have payments suspended
The financial strain was considerable, as Ward relied on his British state pension for around a third of his total income. The DWP only reinstated his payments in September 2024, after he threatened legal action and provided proof that his life certificate had been delivered. The withheld funds were eventually returned in full.
In March 2025, the situation escalated further when Ward received a second request for the same life certificate, even though the required two-year period had not yet passed. His pension was immediately suspended again, ultimately withholding £4,303 over nearly five months.
Ward said: “[The DWP’s] emails said ‘Please get in touch’, but the email also said ‘No reply’. It was like something out of a Kafka novel.”
Refusing to comply with the duplicate request, Ward sent a registered letter stating: “I said I had only sent one a few months ago, and their rules say every two years. I said I’m not going to jump through any more hoops.”
His payments remained frozen until media intervention prompted the DWP to restart them in July 2025
His payments remained frozen until media intervention prompted the DWP to restart them in July 2025, issuing the full arrears without explanation for the error.
Ward’s experience reflects widespread administrative failures impacting British expatriates globally. In 2022, thousands of UK pensioners residing in Canada faced payment suspensions after the DWP alleged non-return of forms that recipients insisted were never delivered.
The department attributed these disruptions to Canadian postal delays, yet affected retirees received termination notices declaring they possessed “no right of appeal against the decision”. Many survived months without their essential monthly income.
Earlier problems emerged in 2019 when the DWP apologised for mistakenly dispatching approximately 1,000 letters to overseas pensioners threatening payment cessation.
The DWP admitted that these notifications were the result of an administrative error that should not have happened
The DWP Madmitted that these notifications, which wrongly claimed life certificates had not been returned, were the result of an administrative error that should not have happened.
Former pensions minister Steve Webb has criticised the DWP’s approach to verifying overseas pensioners’ eligibility. He said: “It is understandable that the DWP checks that it is paying state pensions outside the UK only to people who are still alive.
“But there needs to be a balance in this process which does not result in people repeatedly having their pension stopped simply because the local postal system is particularly unreliable.”
Webb urged Governmental reform saying: “DWP should talk to private pension providers, who are facing exactly the same issue, and adopt best practice from the private sector to avoid this continued hassle for retired British citizens living abroad.”