Date posted: 20th Jan 2025
As we have explained in previous updates, the opportunity to consider increasing your state pension entitlement by voluntarily contributing towards “gaps” in your national insurance record between April 2006 and April 2016 will end on 5 April 2025.
Gaps are essentially years in which you have not paid sufficient national insurance to qualify for that tax year to be recorded as a qualifying year for state pension purposes.
You will need 35 qualifying years to obtain a full state pension upon retirement. If you have 30 years, then you will only be entitled to 30/35ths of the full state pension.
Sadly, you cannot obtain anything more than a full state pension (even if you have 40 qualifying years) and you cannot stop paying national insurance (e.g. if you are an employee or self-employed), where you have more than 35 years.
Before paying, you need to check if there are credits to cover any gaps. Credits may be available in certain circumstances – https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility
To check whether you have gaps in your record, you will need to obtain a state pension forecast. This can be done in a number of ways, which is outlined at https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension
Please do check your state pension entitlement as soon as possible.
As ever, if you have any queries, please give us a call.
