Windrush officials must improve after neglecting dying woman’s claim, says ombudsman

The Windrush compensation scheme must improve after it failed to consider a dying woman’s claim properly and wrongly refused to compensate her husband for the loss of his pension, an ombudsman has said.

Caroline Tobierre’s last days were “overshadowed” by an “exhausting” compensation battle. The WCS has now been ordered by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) to pay £25,000 to her widower, Thomas Tobierre, 71, and daughter Charlotte Tobierre, 40.

The scheme is now reviewing its decision to exclude private pension losses from claims, which could mean others are entitled to more compensation, a development that campaigners including Human Rights Watch have been pushing for.

The Windrush scandal affected thousands of people who entered the country legally as British subjects before being wrongly labelled as illegal immigrants years later. Thomas Tobierre was seven when he came to the UK from St Lucia in 1960, marrying Caroline, a British citizen, in 1975.

After 40 years as an engineer, Thomas was made redundant in 2017, but because he had never been provided with documentation to prove his status he could not find a new job and had to spend his £14,000 private pension.

Thomas’s legal status in the country was settled after revelations about the Windrush scandal and he returned to work in 2018. While people affected were told there would be “no cap” on payments, claimants have repeatedly described receiving inadequate offers, rising only after legal advice and multiple reviews.

Thomas was initially awarded just £3,000 from the compensation scheme for “impact on life” before being offered another £13,764 for loss of access to employment, after a review. In 2021, after the scheme was overhauled, this was increased to £26,798.88 for loss of access to employment and £40,000 for “impact on life”. The PHSO has now found that he “was not fully compensated”.

As a family member who had been affected, Caroline was entitled to apply for compensation and did so in 2021, aged 64, when she had six months to live, having been diagnosed with cancer in 2018. She was originally offered £20,000 for “impact on life”, before this increased to £40,000, but she died before payment and the scheme “did not properly consider the evidence” in her case, the PHSO found.

When the family, from Essex, sought an urgent payment after her death for funeral costs, the scheme “mishandled communication … insensitively”, causing “unnecessary stress” with the couple already having “suffered financial hardship”, the PHSO found.

The ombudsman recommended the scheme apologise to the family, review complaint handling and communication and reconsider its decision to exclude compensation for Thomas’s pension loss. The Home Office agreed.

Charlotte said the ombudsman’s action was “refreshing”. Urging others to seek help, she added: “It almost feels like my mum and dad had done something wrong. It was exhausting. We were absolutely consumed by it and that overshadowed my mum’s cancer journey. I felt sad afterwards thinking we wasted so much time talking about Windrush and missed spending precious time together.

Since 2021, the PSHO has secured more than £430,000 in compensation for people wrongly denied payment.

The PHSO chief executive, Rebecca Hilsenrath KC, said: “The Windrush compensation scheme was set up to right wrongs, but complaints like this show it is not working as it should.”

The Home Office said it was determined to right the wrongs of the Windrush scandal.