Deadline to plug gaps in NI record relaxed

The government has relaxed the deadline for people who want to fill in gaps in their national insurance (NI) record.

If you have gaps in your NI record, perhaps because you took time out of work to bring up children, you might not get the full state pension or qualify for additional benefits.

That’s why the government has been letting people make voluntary contributions to plug gaps going back to 6 April 2006.

But a deadline of 5 April has been set, and once this date has passed, you’ll only be able to make voluntary NI contributions for the previous six tax years.

Deadline flexible if you’ve already started the process

The government’s Future Pension Centre and Pension Service has received a huge number of calls from people unsure about when or whether they need to top up their NI contributions.

As a result, not everybody has managed to get through.

So, as long as you’ve filled in a callback request form before 5 April, you’ll still be allowed to plug gaps in your NI record between 2008 and 2018 after this date.

You can find the form here.

Once you’ve submitted the callback request, you should take a screenshot of the confirmation message, and you can expect to be called back within eight weeks.

“This will enable us to ensure no one misses out, and to suitably manage demand as the deadline approaches,” a government spokesperson said.

“We also encourage people under state pension age to check whether it is beneficial for them to pay voluntary national insurance contributions by using our online checker.”

Check your state pension

You can also use the check your state pension forecast service on GOV.UK to see what your pension will be in retirement and take action if you need to. 

You can also use the HMRC app to check your state pension forecast.

Last month, the government revealed that since the online tool was launched last April:

• more than 37,000 people have made online payments
• the biggest weekly state pension increase has been £113.76
• the average online top-up payment has been £1,835
• nearly two-thirds of the years topped up are from 2017 onwards