Additional State Pension



You are not eligible for the Additional State Pension if you reach SPA on or after 6 April 2016 (although you may still be able to inherit Additional State Pension from your partner). If you reached SPA before 6 April 2016 and started claiming the basic State Pension you will automatically get any Additional State Pension you are eligible for, there is no need to make a separate claim. 


The Additional State Pension is an extra amount of money you could get with your basic State Pension. It is based on your NICs. How much you get depends on your earnings and whether you have claimed certain benefits. There is no fixed amount like the basic State Pension. 



You get the Additional State Pension automatically unless you have contracted out of it (see below). The Additional State Pension is paid with your basic State Pension. It increased by 3% this year to £172.28 a week. The Additional State Pension is made up of two schemes (see below). You might have contributed to both of them, depending on how long you’ve been working. 



The main difference between the two schemes is that since 2002 you would also have contributed to the Additional State Pension if you were claiming certain benefits (see table below).



Before 6 April 2016 you could build up entitlement to Additional State Pension if you were: 


• employed and earning over the lower earnings limit (£112 a week, £486 a month or £5,824 a year in the 2015-16 tax year);


• looking after children under 12 years old and claiming Child Benefit;


• caring for a sick or disabled person for more than 20 hours a week and claiming Carer’s Credit;


• a registered foster carer and claiming Carer’s Credit;


• receiving certain other benefits due to illness or disability.


Contracting out of Additional State Pension


Employed people did not usually build up Additional State Pension for periods when they were in a pension scheme that opted out (“contracted out”) of Additional State Pension. From 6 April 2012 contracting out of the Additional State Pension was abolished for certain kinds of pension schemes:


• a personal or Stakeholder pension scheme; or


• a defined contribution” (DC) occupational pension scheme.


Members of a contracted-out workplace pension did not contribute to the Additional State Pension and paid lower NICs. However, contracting out arrangements ended from 6 April 2016 with the introduction of the new State Pension. 


If you were already contracted out, your NICs will increase to your standard rate after this date.


Those previously affected by the abolition of contracting out for some pension scheme members from 2012 should have been automatically brought back into the Additional State Pension from that time and been building up entitlement. More information is available at: www.gov.uk/additional-state-pension/contracting-out.


If you have not yet reached retirement age but wish to know how much you are likely to get from your state pension, the Pension Forecast Service can give you an estimate (www.gov.uk/check-state-pension).