State Retirement Pensions

(asked on 6th September 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what efforts they have made to inform people what their individual state pension age will be (1) directly using individual letters, and (2) indirectly such as through a national high-profile advertising campaign.


Answered by
Lord Freud Portrait
Lord Freud
This question was answered on 15th September 2016

The Government has provided information in order for all individuals to be able to find out their State Pension age and conditions of their benefits. For example, following the Pensions Act 1995, State Pension estimates, issued to individuals on request, made the changes clear.

Following the 2011 changes, which brought about faster equalisation of men’s and women’s State Pension ages and accelerated the timetable for the rise to 66, DWP wrote to all individuals directly affected to inform them of the change to their State Pension age, using the address details recorded by HMRC at the time.

Information on State Pension age changes and who they affect is also available on GOV.UK, and the online State Pension age calculator gives individuals a quick and simple way to check when they will reach State Pension age.

As part of a national advertising campaign about the changes to the State Pension from 6 April 2016, we encouraged people to find out about their State Pension age. Between August 2015 and April 2016, there were 1.6m visits to the campaign page GOV.UK/yourstatepension. Between February 2016 and April 2016 the State Pension age calculator was used 2.3 million times. The campaign directs people to our new online Check your State Pension service where individual personal State Pension forecasts can be viewed. Over a million forecasts have been viewed since the service launched in February 2016.

We have committed to completing a review of the State Pension age by May 2017. As part of our on-going no-cost media activity on the issue, the launch of the review, for example, was the front page of a number of national newspapers.

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