Martin Lewis’ MSE Urges Pensioners to Claim £50k they could be Owed
Thousands of Brits who tried to boost their State Pension just before the crucial deadline may have been blocked by a last-minute technical error – but there’s still hope, according to Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert team.
The deadline to top up your National Insurance record for the years 2006 to 2018 officially ended at 11:59 pm on Saturday, April 5. For many people under 73, this was a golden opportunity to plug gaps in their NI history and potentially add thousands – even up to £50,000 – to their State Pension pot under transitional rules brought in when the new system launched in 2016.
Normally, you can only buy back up to six years’ worth of NI contributions, but the temporary rules allowed a much longer window. The idea was simple: if you were missing full years of NI between 2006 and 2018, you could pay around £800 to £900 per year to fill them in – and for many, that small upfront cost could mean a huge return over time, reported the Express.
But as reported by Money Saving Expert, a mistake by HMRC meant that their online payment service was taken offline a whole day early. Instead of having until Saturday night, people who logged on were met with a message saying the deadline had already passed. It left many panicked, thinking they’d just lost out on thousands.
HMRC has now confirmed the error and promised to contact anyone who tried to use the service and was blocked. “We’re sorry that customers were unable to use our online service on Saturday,” said an HMRC spokesperson. “We will contact anyone affected directly about the payments they wanted to make to ensure they don’t miss out.”
According to MSE’s senior money writer Rosie Hamilton, it’s worth holding on to any proof you might have, like screenshots or timestamps, in case there’s a delay in being contacted. And if you don’t hear anything, she says you can still try reaching out through HMRC’s various NI channels yourself.
For everyone else who didn’t act in time, the top-up window has now reverted to its usual six-year limit – meaning only the more recent tax years can be filled in. But if you were affected by the online glitch, there’s a real chance you could still get in under the wire and secure that pension boost.
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