Deferred state pension

gropinginthedark

I took this option (in March 2016) I was not notified how much pension I would be entitled to at that time. A couple of years earlier I'd requested a pension forecast and the answer really seemed to be "wait and see". I'd like to find out the current state of play. The mind-bogglingly useless Government gateway as usual starts by offering me ***ing stupid links to such as Sheep and Goats Ear Tag Allocation System for Animal ID Manufacturers. Following vaguely relevant links loops me round to where I started and basically - nothing.

I guess they want me to phone someone but I don't know who and I'm not a great fan of listening to music on hold for an hour like when I needed to phone HMRC with a fairly trivial question not addressed on the web site.

Anyone got a better idea?

Perhaps I should buy a goat in order to get some benefit from Government Gateway - or vote Corbyn to take the problem out of my hands as hyper inflation decimates the value of the currency to the extent the pension isn't worth bothering about. Come to think of it that goat may be a wise investment so the question now is how many goats can I buy if I take my deferred pension now?

Mnd

Tbh we have no problems with the government state pension online service, no questions about sheep's ears��..try again

AnotherJoe

http://bfy.tw/Bqm8

xylophone

The OP has deferred the Old State Pension which he was eligible to receive in March 2016.

It seems that he didn't get a State Pension Forecast before deferment.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/may/03/state-pensions-retirement

The Department of Work and Pensions recommends that anyone considering deferring should first get a state pension forecast.....

If the OP had succeeded in so doing, he'd have a rough idea of the state of play now.

https://www.gov.uk/deferring-state-pension/how-to-claim-a-deferred-state-pension

greenglide

The OP has made the mistake of logging into the Government Gateway directly rather than to the HMRC services used for their systems.

Going to the GG directly shows you many services used by a number of departments as the GG is used for multiple services.

The URL used for the HMRC Personal Tax Account is https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account.

However once you reach SPa the facility to request a Pension Forecast is no longer available and you need to go to https://www.gov.uk/contact-pension-service . I suspect that once you reach SPa the only people who can tell you is the pension claim people - you dont have to make a claim.

gropinginthedark

Yes xylophone has understood correctly. Googling the question had found me a page on gov.uk telling me to log in to Government Gateway which was utterly useless.
The link from AnotherJoe was a step in the right direction but we're dealing with government here so... Got to speak someone fairly quickly on the number from the web site, she gave me a different number to try. The second number took me through more call routing questions to a guy who explained that the call routing questions were wrong so redial and select the "wrong" option and I'd get to the right department! Third try: not too many minutes of music on hold and I got a sensible answer!

Just think of the cost savings if this was all clearly delineated on the web site, I wasted several minutes of each of 3 different operatives' time as I explained what I was looking for to each of them. I also wasted far more of my time searching for the information in the first place, then trying to find a number to call, then the rest...

When they wrote to me a little before the time my state pension was due to start to say I was automatically enrolled in the deferred scheme why not include the amount of the pension payable at that point should I decline the deferral and save me the need to enquire...