DORSET women born in the 1950s are campaigning for compensation over “unfair” changes to their retirement age.

They say women were not given enough warning that their retirement age would rise from 60 to 66 between 2010 and 2020.

Sue Plater of Dorset East WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) said many women had not been properly informed about the changes, which resulted from acts of parliament in 1995 and 2011.

“If you didn’t read certain papers in the 1990s and don’t have social media, how would you know? They didn’t write letters,” she said.

“A lot of women are now looking after grandchildren, saving the government money, caring for parents or doing voluntary work."

She said there should be transitional arrangements for women born from 1950-59.

“We’re not saying we want the money backdated to 60 but just to acknowledge that they’ve got it wrong and some sort of compensation for the lack of notice that we’ve had," she added.

While younger women had more chance to prepare, she said women of the 1950s had often stayed at home to raise children and had banked on retiring at 60.

“It was just always going to be 60,” she said.

“There are a lot of women who left well-paid jobs because they took redundancy thinking ‘in a couple of years, I’m going to be 60’.

“There are still people who think they’re retiring at 60,” she added.

The Dorset East branch of Waspi has 75 members and is seeking to lobby councils and politicians across the county.

A demonstration in Bournemouth in the autumn attracted 30 women, who met in the Square and marched to the Ukip conference at the BIC, where they smoke to a member of the European Parliament.

A deputation to Bournemouth council resulted in a pledge to raise the issue with the government.

A national Waspi petition in October was the largest presented to parliament on one day this century.

Last year, the House of Commons work and pensions committee decided “more could and should have been done” to communicate the changes in retirement age to the women affected.

The government has said the 2011 changes were debated at length and it will “make no further changes to the pension age or pay financial redress in lieu of a pension”.