Benefit Help Required

zappa1

Can anyone shed light on what happens when you reach 60 and Long Term Incpacity Benefit stops and the State Pension kicks in?
My pension forecast shows that I will be about £20 a week worse off on State Pension because they can't trace some of my N.I. Contributions.
I am lead to believe as I now reside in Spain that I will not get any help with this shortfall.
Can anyone give advice on this problem that is worrying me, as this is my only means of income and I am still unable to work.

healy

If there are National Insurance Contributions that are not on your record that should be you need to write to the National Insurance office so that they can trace these and add them to your record.

seven-day-weekend

I live in Spain and have needed to pay two more years of Voluntary NI contributions to get full Pension which I am now doing. However, these are current years - maybe if yours are from the past the time to pay them has expired. If your are on IB you will be getting them credited.

You would not be eligible for Income Support or (AFAIK) Pension Credit whilst living abroad, although State Pension and Incapacity Benefit are two of the few benefits you can claim whilst abroad.

suelees1

healy is right, you'll have to get on to them. Forecasts are not set in stone. Mine recently showed a relatively substantial pension which I know is wrong as they're using out of date information. Before this it was very low as they told me I had no Home Responsibilities Protection as I didn't have any kids (there must have been three apparitions in our house then).

I know very little about benefits abroad but do know we have a reciprocal agreement with a number of countries. However I think the only benefits which you can export are contribution based such as IB and Retirement Pension. You need to make sure they're giving you your full entitlement as I don't think it rises with inflation as it does here. When you mention shortfall, do you mean as here when it would be topped up with Pension Credit? If so you're right, you won't get that in Spain.

seven-day-weekend

You can get the inflation rises on your pension in Spain as it is in the EU.

suelees1

Sorry wasn't sure about that