A reader has written in after his 66-year-old mother was told she had been overpaid her civil service pension by £40,000 and must repay the money, or face legal action.
After tax already paid on the income is taken into account, the amount she is said to owe is £32,000.
The case has had a serious effect on her finances. Her monthly pension payments have been reduced, cutting her annual income from £19,700 to £12,000. She was also initially ordered to repay £496 a month for five years.
That repayment demand was later reduced to £100 a month. A charge was also placed on her house as security.
According to the reader, she has been told she will not have paid back everything she owes until she is 93.
The situation raises difficult questions for pensioners who are asked to repay money that was not their fault. For someone on a fixed income, the combination of reduced pension payments, monthly deductions and legal pressure can leave very little room to cover everyday living costs.
While the source does not set out the circumstances that led to the overpayment, the figures involved show the scale of the problem for the family. What began as an apparent pension error has become a long-term debt repayment plan stretching across decades.
The reader’s mother is now facing the prospect of continuing repayments well into old age, alongside a much lower pension income than she had expected.
