A campaign sparked by the ‘devastating’ consequences of ‘shattered’ retirement plans is heading for the courts.

Women Against State Pension Inequality have announced that the latest move in their bid to overturn a Government decision is to mount a legal challenge.

WASPI said that “retirement plans have been shattered with devastating consequences” following the 1995 Conservative Government’s Pension Act.

A petition against the ‘unfair burden’ on for 1950s women arising from transitional state pension arrangements gained over 193,000 signatures.

Hundreds of thousands of women have had significant changes imposed on them with a lack of appropriate notification, the campaigners have said.

Although they agree with equalisation with men, they labelled as 'unfair' the way the changes were implemented , saying they had been given little or no personal notice.

The action group has employed a London law firm to deal with the case, with a judicial review challenge one option.

To fund the legal challenge, campaigners are using crowdfunding.

A statement from WASPI’s website read: “This news has been a long time coming, because a huge amount of background work had to be done before the campaign was in a position to take this action. Firstly, WASPI needed to have what is called a "legal entity" in order to be able to instruct lawyers and pursue litigation.

“The legal route is not a quick one, with court cases taking years rather than months, so it's vital for WASPI to keep up the momentum with its political campaign.”

Petitions were handed over in the House of Commons recently.

State Pension age changes were first made in 1995 and all women affected have been directly contacted following the changes, the Government said, adding that there were no plans to alter State Pension age arrangements for this group.

The policy decision to increase women’s State Pension age was designed to remove the inequality between men and women, the Government stated. The cost of prolonging this would be several billions of pounds, it said.

Officials from the DWP said that Parliament had “extensively debated the issue” and listened to all arguments both for and against the acceleration of the timetable to remove the inequality. The decision was approved by Parliament in 2011 and there was “no new evidence to consider”, the Government said.

Recently appointed pensions minister Richard Harrington has said the Government will not be making any further changes to the legislation.

Baroness Altmann, who quit as Pensions Minister in the summer, claimed the Government had failed to adequately deal with the “hardship facing women” arising from the reforms.