In recent news, you may have seen that The Department for Work and Pensions has set a 2023 deadline for certain contributions to be made, and as a result, soon to be pensioners could be left out of pocket.
Currently, people can fill NI qualifying years gaps going back to 2006, depending on their age. However from April 5 2023, you will only be able to plug six years’ worth of missed NI contributions.
Therefore we would urge those planning to claim the UK state pension to check their national insurance record, as soon as possible, before 5 April 2023.
In general, to qualify for any ‘new state pension’ (received by those retiring on or after 6 April 2016) a person must have at least 10 qualifying years of NI contributions, and 35 years to qualify for the maximum. For those whose NI record started before 6 April 2016, different rules may apply; the number of required years of NI contributions/credits to obtain the full state pension may be higher.
It is worth noting that you may have been contracted out in the recent years prior to 2016 because you may have been in a certain type of workplace, personal or stakeholder pension. This will mean that even if you have accrued more than the required 35 full years of NI contributions you may not have contributed the maximum amount required to receive maximum state pension and therefore you will need to continue to accrue more years to be eligible for the maximum amount of £185.15 per week.
Therefore, to protect your state pension and other benefits it may be beneficial for you to make voluntary NI contributions to top up your contributions history, potentially increasing the amount of state pension you will receive.
We strongly suggest you review your state pension position, for details please follow the link below: https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension