A lifeline to top up your state pension

WORKERS retiring with broken career histories will be given extra time to top-up their National Insurance records under the new state pension.

The flat-rate payout of around £144 a week will start in April 2016, the Government announced this week, a year earlier than planned.

Workers retiring after this date will need 35 complete years of National Insurance contributions to get the full amount.

A small deduction is made for each missing year — around £4 a week. Those with gaps will still be able to ‘buy’ extra years of National Insurance contributions.

As it stands, retirees can go back up to six years to plug gaps. When the new pension is introduced, retirees will have until 2023 to top-up as many incomplete years from 2006 as they like.

The £690 cost of adding an extra year to National Insurance records will be frozen until 2019. Each year will add £214 to pensioners’ annual income if the flat-rate is set at £144 a week.

By bringing forward the new state pension by a year, the Government has helped 85,000 women born between April and July 1953.

They’d already had to wait up to four years longer to get a pension, only to miss out on the flat-rate by months — £6 extra a week on average. Now their working years will qualify towards the new flat-rate.