Ipswich council backs WASPI campaign for fair pensions for women
WASPI campaigners have been building their support recently. Picture: KAREN SHELDON - Credit: Karen Sheldon
The campaign to compensate women who lost years of pension contributions has been backed by Ipswich council.
It backed the WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequal-ity) campaign which has been running since 2015 to try to win compensation for women born in the 1950s who lost the opportunity to get a full payment when the pension age was raised.
Borough chief executive Russell Williams will now write to the Department of Work and Pensions to support the women in their struggle for a fair transitional pension payment.
Ipswich joins 150 other councils across the country that are also supporting the WASPI Campaign.
WASPI women were born in the 1950s and have had their State Pension age increased by up to six years. The WASPI campaign supports the principle of equalisation of the State Pension age but does not agree with the unfair way the changes were implemented.
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The law was changed in 1995 but the campaigners say the government did not start informing the affected women until 2009.
This has left many local women struggling to manage, some will lose up to £45,000. In the Ipswich area more than 5,000 women are affected and across the whole country 3.8 million women have been affected.
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The WASPI Campaign has been going from strength to strength in recent months starting with a group of five women in 2015 to a campaigning group of over 77,000.
The membership is growing every day as more and more women are reaching the age when they should have been retiring, only to realise that they will not receive their pension when they expected to and they must continue to work, or find alternative ways to fund their retirement.
One campaigner said: “I took early retirement from a demanding NHS management job in 2011 at the age of 55 as my husband’s care needs were increasing and he wasn’t safe to be left alone for many hours.
“At no time was I informed my State Pension age had been increased to 66 years and was unaware until it was too late. Had I known I would have definitely made different choices.”
