DWP exact and full details of how a deferred pension is calculated.

Linton

paulshears said:

I never received any of the information that you refer to, including a letter containing my state pension entitlement.
I do not even know what my estimated state pension was on the date that I became eligible to draw it.
I never knew that this information was going to be removed from the DWP web site records until after they actually did so several years ago.
I never not received anything in writing from the DWP for many years including any letter or Email informing me that I can draw my pension.
The last time I ever got anything relating to my personal estimated state pension was perhaps five years ago, and that, like all previous communications, was from a phone call to them.
The DWP cannot even tell me what my estimated pension was at my state retirement date. 
In addition I have a follow up, telephone number which, as far as I can see, is not published anywhere.
This number will never be answered by a human being because that is the official DWP process.
The recorded message on that number, informs the caller that they must leave their name, national insurance number and telephone number plus any reference number if the caller has one.
It goes on to say that if the available information is not provided then they will not return the call and that if it is, they will return the call within 24 hours. 
I have no reference number, but I have stated this in the message that I leave and I provide the other three pieces of required information. 
I repeat the above process every 48 hours and I leave the name of the person dealing with my complaint. 
I have never received any return call. 
I am aware of at least one other person who has been trying to make some progress and in her case, the last that I heard, she had completely failed to get anywhere after five months of trying. 

Have you deferred your SP from the start?  Are you still deferring?

.In all correspondence I get from DWP the reference number is the NI number.  That should be sufficient.

Try ringing DWP as soon as they open, perhaps 8am.  They may well not be able to give you a definitive statement as to what your deferred pension would be but you should be able to get a statement of the pension you have accrued.  Then it should be a simple calculation to determine the deferred pension value.

Or tell us the numbers from the statement 5 years ago and the date when you became eligible for SP and I should be able to do a rough calculation.

squirrelpie

I may have misunderstood, but if you have an unpublished phone number that only ever gives a prerecorded message and never returns a call with a person, do you know the number is genuine? And even if it is, why continue calling it beyond a few times? Call the published number and complain. Put your complaint in writing. Complain to your MP.

xylophone

If this is the case, I have been unable to find any other reference to it. 
After three months of trying, I have been unable to get a pension estimate out of the DWP, let alone a clear explanation of how it is calculated. 
I note that one woman last year had been trying to get the same information from the DWP for five months to no avail. 

This is rather surprising.

See this very detailed explanation provided to this poster on 27 July 2022.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79394659/#Comment_79394659

You say from your post 17/6/20

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/77298874/#Comment_77298874

that you were then aged 66 so presumably you reached SPA 2019/2020?

You should have received a letter around four months before inviting you to claim your SP.

If you didn't receive such a letter but knew that your SP was due, it was up to you to take action.

https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/how-to-claim

If you chose not to claim, then your SP was automatically deferred.

With regard to how your SP would have been calculated at SPA, see detailed explanation in link above.

In short, at 6/4/16 (when you were under SPA), your starting amount for NSP was calculated.

It was was the higher of

(a) Your entitlement under the old rules

NI years/30 (max) x full basic state pension (£119.30) + (Additional State Pension - (if applicable) Deduction for Contracting Out).

(b) Your entitlement under the new rules

{NI years/35 (max) x Full NSP (£155.65)} -  (if applicable) Contracted Out Pension Equivalent.

If your "starting amount" was under a full NSP, there was the possibility of improving it depending on your personal situation.

See chart on P6 in booklet here (produced at inception of NSP).

https://www.dpf.org.uk/explorer/files/TOPPING-UP-YOUR-STATE-PENSION-GUIDE.pdf

paulshears

Dear Linton 
My thanks for providing, by far, the most detailed information that I have ever seen anywhere including from the DWP and countless others. 
I have telephoned the DWP at 08.00 a great many times and I have got absolutely nowhere. 
This what happens. 
If you call at 07.59am, you will eventually hear a recorded message telling you to ring back at 08.00 as you quite rightly advise. 
If you call at 08.00 you will hear a recorded message telling you that "Due to the unexpected high volume of calls........etc etc". 
If you ever do get a human being by choosing one of the many options presented to you, you will be told to ring a completely different number. 
I have now amassed a total five numbers plus the unpublished follow up complaints number. 
None of these telephone numbers ever produces any productive output. 
Some are just simply incorrect advice, such as being told that the "Future Pensions Service" has a responsibility towards deferred pensioners. If you ring them they will tell you that you have been misinformed and they have no such responsibility and cannot help apart from telling the caller to ring the number that will only tell you to ring them back. And so it goes on ad-infinitum. 


I have never drawn my state pension. The last verbal estimate that I had was:  

04/07/18: £9,825.23/Yr. based on 47.5 Yrs. of National Insurance contributions.

Following a separate link, at the time on the Gov’t web site it went on to stated that my state pension will be reduced by COPE estimate of £54.57 / Wk. = £2,837.64/Yr. because I previously joined other pension schemes (South Yorkshire employee pension scheme & the Lloyds pension scheme. 

(None of this information is now available on the Gov't DWP web site as it get removed once a person reaches state pension age). 

However on 04/07/18 I rang the government pension service and they confidently informed me that the £2,837.64/Yr had already been taken into account in the initial figure of £9,825.23/Yr and so I was told on 04/07/18 I would actually get this figure based on a retirement age of 65 years. 

Of course this was affected by the delayed pension date that everyone was hit by. 

My official new retirement date became 06/01/20. 

Many thanks. 

Paul Shears 

molerat

There is no way that in 2018 DWP told you your retirement was at 65, the change to 66 was enacted in 2011 and forecasts clearly showed that new date.

If you were due £9825 in 2018 you were already well above the new maximum pension and that figure had only increased with inflation since 2016 and continued to do so up until your retirement due date.

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Following a separate link, at the time on the Gov’t web site it went on to stated that my state pension will be reduced by COPE estimate of £54.57 / Wk. = £2,837.64/Yr. because I previously joined other pension schemes (South Yorkshire employee pension scheme & the Lloyds pension scheme. 

(None of this information is now available on the Gov't DWP web site as it get removed once a person reaches state pension age). 

If that is true (which it obviously isn't) then you would be the only person who has ever had such a message 😳

paulshears

molerat said:

There is no way that in 2018 DWP told you your retirement was at 65, the change to 66 was enacted in 2011 and forecasts clearly showed that new date.

If you were due £9825 in 2018 you were already well above the new maximum pension and that figure had only increased with inflation since 2016 and continued to do so up until your retirement due date.

Well that is all the DWP told me. So you can see that the longer this goes on, the more concerned I have become. I can make no progress with this despite the assistance of my MP. 

paulshears

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Following a separate link, at the time on the Gov’t web site it went on to stated that my state pension will be reduced by COPE estimate of £54.57 / Wk. = £2,837.64/Yr. because I previously joined other pension schemes (South Yorkshire employee pension scheme & the Lloyds pension scheme. 

(None of this information is now available on the Gov't DWP web site as it get removed once a person reaches state pension age). 

If that is true (which it obviously isn't) then you would be the only person who has ever had such a message 😳

I have detailed records of the conversations that I have had with the DWP, the dates that they occurred and what was said and what I have been provided with. What I can also tell you is that much of the information that I have been given does not agree with other information that I have been given. This is why I started to keep records. 

paulshears

paulshears said:

molerat said:

There is no way that in 2018 DWP told you your retirement was at 65, the change to 66 was enacted in 2011 and forecasts clearly showed that new date.

If you were due £9825 in 2018 you were already well above the new maximum pension and that figure had only increased with inflation since 2016 and continued to do so up until your retirement due date.

Well that is all the DWP told me. So you can see that the longer this goes on, the more concerned I have become. I can make no progress with this despite the assistance of my MP. 

By the way, the DWP complaints handler told me a couple two weeks ago when she rang me as a result of input from my MP, that the annual agreed government increases are applied each year and then the 5.8% increase is applied to the total for that year. I never get anything in writing. 
Further there was an article in The Telegraph that stated that a freedom of information requested had revealed that there were a number of people in the UK, with deferred state pensions of over £28K. 

Linton

paulshears said:

Dear Linton 
My thanks for providing, by far, the most detailed information that I have ever seen anywhere including from the DWP and countless others. 
I have telephoned the DWP at 08.00 a great many times and I have got absolutely nowhere. 
This what happens. 
If you call at 07.59am, you will eventually hear a recorded message telling you to ring back at 08.00 as you quite rightly advise. 
If you call at 08.00 you will hear a recorded message telling you that "Due to the unexpected high volume of calls........etc etc". 
If you ever do get a human being by choosing one of the many options presented to you, you will be told to ring a completely different number. 
I have now amassed a total five numbers plus the unpublished follow up complaints number. 
None of these telephone numbers ever produces any productive output. 
Some are just simply incorrect advice, such as being told that the "Future Pensions Service" has a responsibility towards deferred pensioners. If you ring them they will tell you that you have been misinformed and they have no such responsibility and cannot help apart from telling the caller to ring the number that will only tell you to ring them back. And so it goes on ad-infinitum. 


I have never drawn my state pension. The last verbal estimate that I had was:  

04/07/18: £9,825.23/Yr. based on 47.5 Yrs. of National Insurance contributions.

Following a separate link, at the time on the Gov’t web site it went on to stated that my state pension will be reduced by COPE estimate of £54.57 / Wk. = £2,837.64/Yr. because I previously joined other pension schemes (South Yorkshire employee pension scheme & the Lloyds pension scheme. 

(None of this information is now available on the Gov't DWP web site as it get removed once a person reaches state pension age). 

However on 04/07/18 I rang the government pension service and they confidently informed me that the £2,837.64/Yr had already been taken into account in the initial figure of £9,825.23/Yr and so I was told on 04/07/18 I would actually get this figure based on a retirement age of 65 years. 

Of course this was affected by the delayed pension date that everyone was hit by. 

My official new retirement date became 06/01/20. 

Many thanks. 

Paul Shears 

First thing.  The quoted State Pension is not reduced by COPE.  COPE was a number used in the transition calculation between old and new pension schemes in 2016.  After 2016 it is totally irrelevent.

In 2018/2019 your pension forecast was £9825/year= approx £189/week.  But the full state pension in that year was approx £164/week.  This indicates that in 2016 you had already accrued more than the new pension so you would not have gained anything more than inflation in the following years. In this situation your SP split into new SP and "Protected" SP. It appears your 2018/19 SP was split:

New SP: £164/week
Protected SP: £25/week

This matters because the new SP is subject to the triple-lock with a minimum increase of 2.5%  whereas Protected SP is only increased with CPI. So we can calculate each year, figures rounded:

2019/2020: nSP Increase 2.6%, CPI increase 2.4%
nSP: £168
PSP:£26

2020/2021: nSP increase 3.9%, CPI increase 1.7%
nSP: £175
PSP: £26

2021/2022 nSP increase 2.5%, CPI increase 0.5%
nSP: £179
PSP: £26

2022/2023: nSP increase: 3.1%    , CPI increase 3.1% (Triple lock suspended)
nSP: £185
PSP: £27

2023/2024 nSP increase: 10.1%, CPI increase 10.1%
nSP:£204
PSP: £30

So if we assume that you start taking your SP in 2023/24 after a deferral of say 170 weks your deferred SP should be the 23/24 figures increased by a factor of 170/9 X 0.01=0.19
nSP: £243
PSP: £35

Total: £278/week=£14456/year

his is approximate and my figures could be wrong, hopefully someone should be able to point out any serious errors.