State Pension - Pensioners over 80 receive an extra 25p a week!
But some will get more, says Paul Lewis
Radio Times reader Delia emailed me in order to get something off her chest: “I turned 80 at the end of September last year and received an age-related rise to my pension of 25p per week. This is an insult. I’m writing to you to let off steam.”
Everyone on the state pension receives this “birthday present” of an extra 25p a week when they reach 80 – but it’s now worth so little you’d need to save it up for three weeks to buy a second-class stamp! (In 1971, when the addition was introduced, the state pension was only £6 a week. So 25p, while not generous, was the equivalent today of £6.50 on top of the current basic pension of £156.20 a week.)
Delia thinks it would be better to scrap what she calls “this paltry sum”. But it costs around £47 million a year to give it to the 3.6 million state pensioners over 80, and I can see the headlines now if the Government tried to take it away! However, I don’t imagine they’ll be raising it to £6.50 either (at a cost of over £1 billion a year). Not least because it’s a problem that will eventually go away: the 25p addition will not be paid with the new state pension when the first people who get that reach 80.
Calculate how much more income you could get instantly by using our online annuity calculator.
Meanwhile, there’s a much bigger bonus for some people aged 80 or more. If they don’t get a state pension, or they get one which is currently below £93.60 a week, they can get their pension boosted to that amount. Everyone aged 80 or more is entitled to this pension – called Category D – regardless of how many National Insurance Contributions they have paid or their other income. It is given solely because of their age and a basic residence test.
Around 84,500 people get one, but the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted it has failed in the past to give this top-up automatically to people on low or no pension when they reach 80. So it’s well worth claiming if you’re aged 80 or more and your basic state pension is less than £93.60 a week or you get no state pension at all.
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Call 0800 731 7898 to request a claim form, or search gov.uk for “over 80 pension”.