The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed that it will not be providing blanket compensation to pensioners over the delay in receiving state pension payments.

In a letter to the Work and Pensions Committee, Pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, said that the government will, however, consider making payments on a case-by-case basis to those who have incurred additional costs as a direct result of DWP maladministration.

According to Opperman's letter, since the delays emerged in July, the average claim processing time for complex cases, where the DWP is reliant upon further information before a claim can be finalised, excluding Get Your State Pension claims, was around seven weeks.

More broadly, he confirmed that the average processing time for complex claims from August 2020 to August 2021 was 39 days, up from 37 days for the period from August 2019 to August 2020.

However, he clarified that this was a “heavily inflated” average, as only the most complex cases or those cases cleared via the Customer Account Management (CAM) system are now considered when calculating the average clearance time for a state pension claim.

Opperman also provided an update on the progress made in clearing the delay, stating that as of 31 October, there were 424 claims where payment were due, all of which have been progressed as far as possible.

This was in addition to 3,220 claims, as of 4 November, where the DWP was awaiting further information from the customer before the claim could be finalised.

The government has also redeployed around 700 staff to retirement services to address the problem and improve the system further to ensure that the issue does not happen again.

Opperman attributed the delay to an “unanticipated change in customer behaviour caused specifically by the economic conditions created by the pandemic”, which saw greater numbers of customers deferring their state pension as they continued to work.

This was alongside a “substantial increase” in claim volumes throughout 2021, following the equalisation of state pension age.

In addition to this, the Pensions Minister said that there had been “high levels of attrition”, as DWP employees progressed within government or were promoted, as well as being impacted by operational challenges and staff availability as a result of the pandemic.

Opperman also addressed claims of long wait times, stating that the average customer contacting the state pension claims line over the past three weeks waited on average six minutes for their call to be answered, with 89 per cent of all calls received answered.

Opperman concluded: "We do not expect this issue to arise again as it was the confluence of multiple factors.

“In addition, to mitigate its likelihood, we have redeployed the appropriate resource to clear outstanding cases and are investing in online systems to process claims more efficiently."

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