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As you are probably aware, at the request of the EU, the Conservative Government announced plans to equalise state pension age (SPA) for men and women in 1995.
They added 5 years to women’s SPA. They could have just as easily have lowered the men’s retirement age or met men’s and women’s somewhere in the middle, such as 62.5 years. However, they didn’t. Men have lost out as well, because when pension credit was introduced in 2003 men were entitled to pension credit at 60 if unemployed, in an amount equal to retirement pension, which effectively closed the gap between age of retirement for men and women already.
These changes wouldn’t be introduced until 2010, which was 15 years later, but it was done under the radar, sneakily one might say.
After all one would assume that such a big change to women’s SPA would involve notifying individually those most effected e.g. those born early to mid-1950s.
However, incredibly, this was never done. There are still women in the UK who have no idea that their retirement age has changed and it is only now, since the changes started in 2010, that women are becoming aware.
Consequently, for so many, it is as though the changes were both legislated and initiated only recently, without any notice at all! This has had a devastating effect on those women, who have had little or no time to prepare for those changes...
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