A 94-YEAR-OLD war veteran from Ryedale has won a breakthrough in his lengthy battle for compensation over a pension error.

Major Richard Perkins, of Lastingham, near Pickering, says he has been told that his case is to be reviewed by Veterans Minister Andrew Robathan.

Major Perkins has been campaigning for justice since he discovered in the 1990s that tax had been wrongly deducted from his army pension.

Four decades of tax was repaid in 2004 but he has never been compensated for the lost interest.

Major Perkins saw service behind Japanese lines in Burma in 1944 as part of the special unit known as the Chindits and later served during the Malayan emergency in the late 1950s. He suffered a mental breakdown and was invalided out of the army in 1959 but due to an administrative blunder, he was not given his pension tax free, unlike thousands of other soldiers.

He protested outside Parliament in 2008 and in 2009 he was offered £200 which he rejected because he believed he was owed £90,300.

He has now won the support of the Leicestershire Regiment Association.