A record £170million in pension payments were made to people after they had died last year.

Just £348million of the £673million inadvertently paid out to deceased pensioners in the last five years has been recovered by the exchequer.

Of the rest, some £240million has been written off as unrecoverable debt.

Grieving families have no legal obligation to give any money back, so civil servants can only write to them requesting repayment.

Last year’s figure was the highest sum paid out erroneously on record, the Telegraph reported.

The overpayments are usually caused by a lag between a person passing away and their family notifying the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

Relatives must report a death within five days of a person passing away or body being discovered.

A failure to report a death is recorded by DWP as a fraud or claimant error.

As it is, DWP has no legal power to recoup money paid out to people who are no longer around to receive it.

Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, a Liberal Democrat who served in the Coalition Government under David Cameron, added that taking a heavy-handed approached on the recently bereaved would also go down poorly with the public.

He added that the number of overpayments would likely increase as the number of pensioners and rates grow.

Shimeon Lee, a policy analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said that while the losses are a small share of the overall amount paid to pensioners, they represent a ‘serious weakness’ in the system.

A spokesperson for DWP said it was the department’s policy to pursue debt where it is ‘cost-effective’ to recover.

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