How to check your state pension forecast and NI record for any errors

I’m a ‘Waspi’ woman Entitled to state pension in October 2024.

I have 45 qualifying years with deductions from weekly pension forecasts due to the Contracted Out Pension Equivalent (COPE) over the past few years.

An error occurred between the Government Gateway cipher and my P60 for the year ending April 2022. This puts me £4 a week short of the maximum pension of £203.85 per week based on current projections.

My dilemma is that if my P60 is correct, as expected, the additional year of contributions will raise my pension to the higher rate. If not, I can benefit from paying £800 to fill back the missing year.

I am in correspondence with HMRC and my employer to resolve the issue but it is taking time. My last qualifying National Insurance contribution should be in April 2024.

I always thought HMRC records and P60 numbers would match. Since the pay slips showed what I was making and the deductions were about as expected, I assumed that as in other years 2021/2022 would show a full contribution.

Fortunately, since my “missing year” is relatively recent, it should be traceable. If it wasn’t discovered until many years after the event, however, it might have been a different story.

I hope this is helpful and will remind readers of the importance of checking the data regularly.

SCROLL DOWN TO FIND OUT HOW TO ASK STEVE YOUR PENSION QUESTION

Steve Webb replies: Thank you for sharing your experiences. You are absolutely right that everyone should check their National Insurance records periodically to make sure they are correct.

Errors in your NI administration can lead to you missing out on AOW or other NI benefits to which you are entitled. They can also mean wasting money on voluntary contributions that were not necessary.

To help readers with this, I explain which steps you should take and what you should pay attention to when viewing your AOW and NI file.

1. Look up your data

There are two main places where you can check your NI record.

– On the DWP’s ‘check AOW’ page, that will give you your full year-by-year NI overview plus a forecast of your AOW benefit.

– On HMRC’s ‘check your national insurance details’ page.

Any year in which you worked as an employee or self-employed throughout the year and paid the relevant NI contributions should be shown as a ‘full year’, as should any year in which you were eligible for NI ‘credits’ throughout the year (more on that below).

2. Check which years are ‘not full’

Some years may show as “not full” (see example NI record screenshot below) and these are the years you should focus on.

Sometimes it can be true that a year is ‘not full’. Examples can be:

– Where you only worked part of the year and did not earn enough during that period to accrue an entire year’s worth of NI premiums;

– Where you were outside the UK and did not pay NI contributions;

– When you were in full-time higher education. In the example above, the person was at university in 1984/85 and 1985/86, so those years are a gap in his/her palmares.

– Where the ‘wrong’ person in a couple applies for child benefit, with the result that the corresponding NI credit goes to the highest earner, instead of to the person at home with the children who needed the credit;

– If you paid the reduced rate ‘married stamp’ NI for that year.

I also often hear from self-employed people who tell me that their ‘accountant arranged everything for them’, and assumed that their NI was in order, but in fact – for whatever reason – the accountant failed to for the relevant payments to have been made.

Did you miss out on an AOW benefit if you were a widower?

This is Money columnist Steve Webb is urging elderly widows who may have missed a back payment when their husbands died to get in touch.

He wants to help people get money that is rightfully theirs, and find out if there’s a systemic problem that hasn’t been picked up in the government’s massive correction exercise for older women who were underpaid.

Find out if you may be affected and how to contact Steve here.

> Will you miss out on AOW if you became a widow on retirement?

3. Find any errors

Sometimes when a year shows as ‘not full’ it could be an error.

Examples are:

– If your employer has made a mistake in reporting your NI contributions to HMRC;

– If you have paid voluntary NI contributions for a year, but these have not been credited to your administration;

– If you should get ‘credits’, but they are missing; For example, we at This is Money recently pointed out that many people with Universal Credit have been mistakenly missing out on the automatic NI credits they should receive.

In addition to years showing as ‘full’ or ‘not full’, sometimes a year is shown as ‘under review’, and this can sometimes be many years after the event.

It is worth noting that after the end of a fiscal year it can take several months for that year’s NI information to load on the website.

4. Fix any errors

Here’s what to do with the information you may have learned during the above checks.

– If you think there is simply an error in your file – for example, you know you have worked and paid NI for a full year, but the year is shown as ‘not full’ – then you should contact HMRC and contest this.

If you have paperwork, such as P60s, it can help sort things out.

– If you think you should have received NI points for a particular year then you must also request this from HMRC.

The gov.uk website provides an overview of who is entitled to NI credits here.

In some cases, you will not receive credits because they are not awarded automatically and you did not apply for them (for example, the “grandparent credit” available to certain family members who care for a child).

In this case, it may be possible to claim credits retroactively, but the rules for retroactive application vary from credit to credit.

– If a year indicates ‘under review’, then you should contact HMRC to find out what further information they require. The number of the NI helpline is: 0300 200 3500.

– If the year is correctly displayed as ‘not full’, you may still be able to pay voluntary NI contributions to make it a full year. Until July 31 of this year you can go back to 2006/07, after that you can only go back six years.

Unfortunately, we are still hearing from people who are struggling to talk to the Future Pension Center about paying voluntary contributions, so you may have to persevere.

5. Check in the future and keep paperwork

As this week’s questioner rightly points out, all of this is much easier to manage if you check regularly and keep all your paperwork.

It can be difficult, if not impossible, to resolve matters pertaining to a year that goes back decades and for which you no longer have paperwork.

For you, our current enquirer, I hope you can resolve the issues you’ve identified with your NI record, and thank you for sharing your experience for the benefit of other readers.

If you have discovered a missing year that is incorrect and you have attempted to address this with HMRC, please write to pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk and tell us your story. Put MISSING YEAR in the subject line. Please note, however, that we cannot respond to everyone.