Deferring State Pension if you get benefits or tax credits

Find out how State Pension deferral would affect your other benefits and tax credits.

Benefits claimed by you or your partner

You cannot build up extra State Pension during any period you get:

Income Support
Pension Credit
Employment and Support Allowance (income-related)
Jobseeker’s Allowance (income-based)
Universal Credit
Carer’s Allowance
Incapacity Benefit
Severe Disablement Allowance
Widow’s Pension
Widowed Parent’s Allowance
Unemployability Supplement

You cannot build up extra State Pension during any period your partner gets:

Income Support
Pension Credit
Universal Credit
Employment and Support Allowance (income-related)
Jobseeker’s Allowance (income-related)

You must tell the Northern Ireland Pension Centre if you’re on benefits and you want to defer.

You will need to defer for a minimum amount of time before your State Pension will start to increase.

This will either be 9 or 5 weeks, depending on when you reach State Pension age. Time when you (or your partner) get these benefits does not count towards that time.

Higher weekly payments

Taking your extra State Pension as higher weekly payments could reduce the amount you get from:

Income Support
Pension Credit
Universal Credit
Employment and Support Allowance (income-related)
Jobseeker’s Allowance (income-related)
Housing Benefit
Rate Relief
Tax credits

If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016

Your tax credits payments may be reduced if you choose to take your extra State Pension as a lump sum.

Get help

Contact the office that pays your benefits if you need help to understand how your benefits could be affected, at the link below:

Jobs and benefits offices, Jobcentres and Social Security offices

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