The basic State Pension, SERPS and Additional State Pension

The basic State Pension is the older of the two State Pension systems, and it pays up to £184.90 a week to people with enough National Insurance qualifying years¹. It applies to a man born before 6 April 1951 or a woman born before 6 April 1953¹. People born on or after those dates claim the new State Pension instead, which pays a full rate of £241.30 a week³.

The old system, often called the old State Pension, has two tiers: a basic amount based on your National Insurance contributions, and an additional amount, also based on your contributions⁴. The additional amount is better known by its older names, SERPS and the State Second Pension, and many people who were "contracted out" through a workplace pension gave up some or all of it in exchange for lower National Insurance contributions and a promise from their pension scheme called the Guaranteed Minimum Pension⁶.

This page explains how the basic State Pension works end to end: who qualifies, how a part pension is calculated, how the pension rises each year, how SERPS and the Additional State Pension fit in, what happens on the death of a spouse or civil partner, and what can and cannot be shared on divorce.

Who gets the basic State Pension

The basic State Pension is for a man born before 6 April 1951 or a woman born before 6 April 1953¹. The same birth dates are usually described by when you reached State Pension age: if you reached it before 6 April 2016, you claim the basic State Pension and possibly the Additional State Pension; if you reached it on or after that date, you claim the new State Pension⁹. The two cut-offs differ because men's and women's State Pension ages were not aligned until November 2018, so women born between 6 April 1951 and 5 April 1953 reached State Pension age under the new system even though men born on the same dates did not⁴.

Your date of birth is not the only condition. You also need enough National Insurance qualifying years, which come from paying contributions while working or from credits, for example while claiming certain benefits or caring¹¹. A qualifying year is a tax year in which you paid or were credited with enough National Insurance. People who spent years abroad, in low-paid work or outside the workforce may have gaps, and the rules on filling them are covered later in this page.

State Pension age itself is worked out from your gender and date of birth¹². It is currently 66 and is increasing gradually over the next two years until it reaches 67¹³. Under current law it is due to rise again to 68 between 2044 and 2046, although that timetable could be changed⁴. The page on State Pension age explains how to find your own date.

The full rate: £184.90 a week from April 2026

The full basic State Pension is £184.90 a week². You get the full amount only if you have all the qualifying years needed for your date of birth; with fewer years you get a proportionately smaller pension, explained in the next section.

The rate is not fixed. In April 2026 the full basic State Pension rose from £176.45 to £184.90 a week, taking the full annual amount to £9,614¹⁴. A year earlier, in 2024/25, it was £169.50, up from £156.20 in 2023/24¹⁵. The Office for Budget Responsibility notes the basic State Pension paid up to £156.20 a week in 2023-24¹⁶. These year-on-year rises are driven by the triple lock, covered below.

The basic pension is only part of the story for most people. On top of it, many pensioners receive the Additional State Pension, and the two together make up the total old-system State Pension. The full new State Pension, for comparison, is a single payment of £241.30 a week³.

Qualifying years and how a part pension is worked out

How many qualifying years you need for the full basic State Pension depends on when you were born:

The figures come from official guidance on the basic State Pension². The lower minimums for people born between 1945 and 1953 reflect changes made in April 2010, when the number of years needed for a full pension was cut to 30 and the minimum for any pension at all was reduced to one year for that group².

If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2010, the older rules applied: 44 qualifying years for a man and 39 for a woman for the full pension, with at least 11 qualifying years for a man or 10 for a woman to get anything¹⁷. Carers' guidance gives the same figures, noting that carers can build up qualifying years through credits even when they are not earning¹⁷.

A part pension is worked out as a fraction of the full amount: someone with half the required qualifying years gets half of £184.90. Because the fraction is of the full rate, not of your earnings, two people with the same number of years get the same basic pension regardless of what they earned. The Additional State Pension, by contrast, was earnings-related, which is why two people with identical basic pensions can have very different total State Pensions.

If you have gaps, you may be able to pay voluntary National Insurance contributions to fill them¹⁸. If you are above State Pension age, you need to contact the Pension Service to check whether you have a gap, and they can tell you whether a payment would actually benefit you¹⁸. The page on paying voluntary National Insurance covers this in more detail.

How the basic State Pension rises each year under the triple lock

The basic State Pension increases every year by whichever is the highest of three measures: the average percentage growth in wages in Great Britain, the percentage growth in prices in the UK, or 2.5 per cent¹. This is the triple lock. Pension Wise describes the same rule as the government choosing the highest of inflation in the previous September, average wage growth between May and July of the previous year, or 2.5 per cent¹⁹.

The lock has two layers. There is a statutory requirement to uprate both the basic and new State Pension every year at least in line with earnings, and the triple lock commitment goes beyond this, uprating by the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5 per cent⁴. It was announced in the June 2010 Budget¹⁶.

The lock has produced some large rises. In April 2024 the basic State Pension and new State Pension increased by 8.5 per cent, in line with the earnings growth measure¹⁵. The page on how the State Pension goes up each year explains the mechanics and the debates around the policy.

SERPS, State Second Pension and the Additional State Pension

The additional State Pension is an extra amount on top of the basic pension, and it is sometimes also known as SERPS or the State Second Pension (S2P)¹. It is built up through National Insurance contributions in the same way as the basic pension, but it was earnings-related: the more you earned, the more you built up.

The scheme changed its name and structure over time. People built up entitlement through the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) between 1978 and 2002, and through the State Second Pension from 2002 onwards⁴. From 6 April 2016, the new State Pension replaced both the basic and additional pensions for people reaching State Pension age after that date⁴.

You get the Additional State Pension automatically if you are eligible for it, unless you were contracted out⁶. Eligibility follows the same birth dates as the basic pension: a man born before 6 April 1951 or a woman born before 6 April 1953⁶. People born after those dates get the new State Pension instead and cannot build up Additional State Pension in their own right, though they may still be able to inherit it from a partner⁶.

Contracting out and the Guaranteed Minimum Pension

Under the State Pension rules before 2016, you or your workplace or private pension scheme could choose to contract out of the Additional State Pension⁷. If you were contracted out, some of your National Insurance contributions were either lower than those of people who were not contracted out, or were paid into another pension such as a workplace or private pension⁷. In return, you gave up some or all of your Additional State Pension. All contracting out stopped on 5 April 2016⁷.

Most people who were contracted out through a workplace scheme were promised a minimum pension in its place. A Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) is a minimum pension that a workplace pension scheme normally provides²⁰. It only applies if you were contracted out of the Additional State Pension from 6 April 1978 to 5 April 1997²⁰. After April 1997 schemes had to meet a different overall standard, but GMPs already built up remained.

The GMP affects how your pension increases. Pension schemes did not have to provide indexation to GMPs built up between April 1978 and April 1988²⁰. Each year, schemes have to increase the amount of GMP built up from April 1988 to April 1997 in line with living costs, capped at three per cent²⁰. If you have a public sector pension, any indexation built up from April 1978 to April 1988 is protected and will be paid by your scheme; if you have a private sector pension and left before the scheme's pension age, your GMP may have a fixed rate revaluation until you reach retirement age²⁰. The Pension Protection Fund, which protects members of failed schemes, notes that mandatory increases were payable on GMP benefits built up between 6 April 1988 and 5 April 1997²¹.

The practical effect of contracting out is that your State Pension is smaller than it would otherwise have been, but you have a corresponding promise inside your workplace pension. The page on contracting out and the Guaranteed Minimum Pension covers this in full.

Claiming on a spouse's or civil partner's National Insurance record

If your own National Insurance record is short, you may be able to claim a pension based on the contributions of your current or former spouse or civil partner⁵. This is a feature of the old system only: if you reach State Pension age on or after 6 April 2016, you will not be able to increase your State Pension using your spouse's or civil partner's National Insurance record²². The new State Pension is based on your own record, and you cannot usually use a former partner's or spouse's record²³.

For those under the old system, the rules have changed over the years. From 6 April 2010, a married man's or civil partner's basic State Pension can be based partly or wholly on his wife's or civil partner's National Insurance record, closing a gap that previously worked only in the other direction²². If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016, you may also be able to use part of a former spouse's or new partner's record²³.

The increase is capped. If you are married or in a civil partnership and reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016, you might be able to get up to £110.75 per week based on your spouse's or civil partner's contributions². You can only get this increase if you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016 and your spouse or civil partner either reached State Pension age before that date and qualifies for the basic State Pension, or reached it on or after that date with one or more qualifying years from before 6 April 2016². You may also be able to increase your State Pension if you are not eligible for the basic State Pension at all, or your basic State Pension is less than £110.75 per week¹¹.

When claiming, you will need the date of your most recent marriage, civil partnership or divorce, dates of any time spent living or working abroad, your bank or building society details, and the invitation code from the letter about getting your State Pension²⁴.

What a widow, widower or surviving partner can inherit

State Pension payments generally stop when someone dies, but a spouse or civil partner might be able to inherit some of the pension¹⁹. If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016, you may be able to inherit some of your spouse's or civil partner's State Pension when they die². You might be able to inherit if your basic State Pension is less than £184.90 per week, or in other circumstances set out in official guidance¹¹.

If both you and your husband, wife or civil partner were getting the basic State Pension when they died, you may be able to use their National Insurance contributions to get extra basic pension²⁵. You may be able to increase your basic State Pension using their qualifying years if you do not already get the full amount of £184.90 a week². If your spouse or civil partner topped up their State Pension between 12 October 2015 and 5 April 2017, you may be able to inherit some or all of that top-up².

Additional State Pension can also be inherited. Even people who cannot build up Additional State Pension in their own right might still be able to inherit it from their partner⁶. If you are widowed, you may be able to inherit part of your partner's Additional State Pension that was already built up under the pre-2016 rules⁸. If your partner was getting extra State Pension before they died, you inherit it as extra weekly payments paid with your own State Pension²⁶.

Deferral adds a further layer. If your partner deferred their State Pension by a year or more, you can usually choose to inherit it as a lump sum or as weekly payments, and you will get a letter setting out the options²⁶. If they deferred for less than 12 months, you can only get the extra State Pension, not a lump sum, and you must not have remarried or formed a new civil partnership; the inheritance is paid only once you have reached State Pension age yourself². The page on inheriting a partner's State Pension goes through the detail.

Deferring: a bigger weekly pension or a lump sum

You can postpone claiming your State Pension, known as deferring, and get a higher pension or a lump sum when you do claim⁵. Deferring means larger weekly payments when you eventually start taking the pension²⁷.

The rules for the basic State Pension are more generous than for the new State Pension. You must defer for at least five weeks³. For every five weeks you defer, you get one per cent of the deferred amount added to your regular payment for life, which works out at just under 10.4 per cent for every 52 weeks deferred³. By contrast, the new State Pension increases every week you defer it, but at a lower rate⁸.

To get a one-off lump sum payment you must defer for at least 12 months³. You cannot get both increased regular payments and a lump sum, unless you reached State Pension age and deferred before 2005³. The choice between the two is permanent, so it is worth checking which suits your circumstances, including your tax position, before deciding.

Deferring can also interact with backdating. Official guidance for the new State Pension gives an example of someone who defers for 78 weeks (18 months), backdates their claim by 12 months and gets a one-off arrears payment of £12,547.60 plus £6.97 per week extra for the additional 26 weeks³. The page on deferring your State Pension covers the sums in detail.

Divorce: what can and cannot be shared

The basic State Pension cannot be shared on divorce²⁸. This is a hard limit: no court order can transfer basic State Pension from one former spouse to the other. What can be shared, with a court order, is the Additional State Pension, and the Protected Payment element of the new State Pension²⁸.

Private and workplace pensions are treated differently from the State Pension and are usually the bigger prize. Pensions are often not considered during divorce, even though they are frequently one of the largest assets after the family home²⁹. The page on pensions on divorce explains the options, which include pension sharing, offsetting and earmarking, and there is a separate page for divorce in Scotland, where the law differs.

Where a pension share is awarded, the mechanics matter. In the NHS Scotland scheme, for example, the scheme member's former partner becomes a credit member of the scheme: their share remains within the scheme and cannot be transferred out, and they cannot add to its value through transfers in or by purchasing additional benefits³⁰. Similar restrictions can apply elsewhere: you might not be able to transfer a pension if you have a share of an ex-partner's pension following a divorce, or a scheme with special features or guarantees like a Guaranteed Minimum Pension³¹.

The State Pension record can still matter after divorce. If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016, you may be able to use part of your former spouse's National Insurance record to count towards your State Pension²³. To find out whether you can use a former partner's record to increase your pension, contact the Pension Service²³.

Claiming, payment days and backdating

How you claim depends on where you live. In England, Scotland or Wales you can claim online through GOV.UK, or by phone or post through the Pension Service¹⁹. To claim by post you need to phone the Pension Service to get a claim form, then send the completed form to the Pension Service's handling site in Wolverhampton²⁴. In Northern Ireland you claim through the Northern Ireland Pension Centre²⁶. Outside the UK, you claim by email or phone through the International Pension Centre, or by post using the International State Pension claim form¹⁹. The page on claiming from abroad covers the overseas rules.

Once claimed, the pension is usually paid every four weeks, rather than on the same date each month, by direct payment into an account of your choice¹⁹. The day of the week depends on the last two digits of your National Insurance number²:

If you defer your claim, you will get your first payment at the end of the first full week in which you want to start getting your pension². A claim can be backdated, but the maximum period of backdating is 12 months, and a claim cannot be backdated to a date before you reached State Pension age⁸.

Overpayments can happen, and you may have to repay the money if you did not report a change straight away, gave wrong information, or were overpaid by mistake². If someone has died and you believe their State Pension was underpaid, there is a process to request information about underpaid State Pension for someone who has died³³.

Tax, work and benefits alongside the pension

The State Pension is taxable. Age UK warns that when it is added to your earnings it may put you into a higher tax band⁵. In practice, pensioners are unlikely to pay tax if the State Pension is their only income⁴. You will only pay tax if your total taxable income, including your State Pension, is higher than your personal allowances³⁴.

The State Pension is paid without tax taken off, which is why it can create a tax bill elsewhere. If you need to pay tax on your State Pension and have no other income from which HMRC can collect it, you may be sent a Simple Assessment, a calculation showing what you owe and how to pay³⁵. The page on how pension income is taxed explains the mechanics.

Working does not reduce the pension itself. The basic State Pension is based on the number of qualifying years you achieve during your working life¹, and anyone can continue working past State Pension age³⁶. You can claim the State Pension while working as long as you have reached State Pension age²⁷. What earnings can affect is income-related benefits: money you earn after State Pension age may affect Pension Credit and Housing Benefit³⁶. The page on how pensions affect benefits covers this.

Two further points are worth knowing. First, some people who are entitled to the State Pension do not claim it: official statistics on unfulfilled eligibility estimate the amounts going unclaimed each year¹³. If you think you may be missing out, the Pension Service can check your record. Second, people aged 80 or over with little or no basic State Pension may qualify for the Over 80 Pension, a State Pension for people aged 80 or over¹; official guidance has listed its rate at £105.70 a week³³. Free, impartial guidance is available from Pension Wise and from MoneyHelper.