The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid £170m in state pension and pension credits to deceased pensioners in 2025-26, with almost half of the sum still unrecovered. The department has written off £16.5m of the debt and is attempting to recover £67m.
Five-year total reaches £673m
Over the past five years, £673m has been paid to dead pensioners, and just over half of it, £348m, has been recovered, The Daily Telegraph reports. The newspaper published the figures obtained under freedom of information, adding that it has been the highest sum on record.
Debts that cost more to chase than they are worth are being written off, with almost £240m having been written off in the past five years. Grieving families are not legally obliged to hand the money back, so officials can only write and ask for repayments.
Officials respond to the figures
According to ministers, unrecovered sums represent only around 0.1% of the annual £150bn pension spending. However, Shimeon Lee, a policy expert at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said taxpayers will be "shocked that hundreds of millions have been paid into the accounts of people who had already died" and that it shows a "serious weaknesses in the system".
Former Pensions Minister Sir Steve Webb explained that the mistake can happen when someone dies but their family does not register the death and notify DWP soon enough. He added: "There is no legal power for DWP to force people to repay this money, and many people would be upset if DWP took a heavy-handed approach to the recently bereaved."
Sir Steve warned that as pension rates increase and the size of the pensioner population grows, the amount sent to deceased people each year will likely rise.
DWP urges use of Tell Us Once
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."
Deaths must be reported within five days of the person passing away or a body being discovered, or eight days in Scotland. Where someone fails to report a death or gives misleading information, the DWP treats the cash as a formal overpayment recoverable by law and logs it as fraud or claimant error.
