Putting off your claim for at least five weeks

By choosing to put off claiming your State Pension you can receive an extra State Pension. You must put off your claim for at least five weeks. For every five weeks you put off claiming you can earn an increase to your State Pension of one per cent. Extra State Pension is paid on top of your normal weekly State Pension. It continues for as long as you are getting State Pension. Extra State Pension is increased each April in line with increases to your State Pension.

If you defer your pension and choose extra State Pension, it will be treated like any other income when working out other benefits you may be receiving.

If you have put off claiming your State Pension and there are days where you get other benefits, then these days will not count towards any extra State Pension.

Your extra State Pension is counted as income for tax purposes in the same way as your State Pension.

If you die while you are still putting off your State Pension, your widow, widower or surviving civil partner may be entitled to extra State Pension when they claim their own State Pension.

Your widow, widower or surviving civil partner may receive extra State Pension added to their own State Pension after your death. This could happen if you had already claimed your State Pension and chosen extra State Pension before your death.

Until April 2010, widowers and surviving civil partners have to be of State Pension age or over to be entitled to extra State Pension.

The amount of extra State Pension payable to a widow, widower or surviving civil partner will be based on:

– all of the deceased’s basic State Pension

– between 50 and 100 per cent of any additional State Pension (depending on the date the deceased reached, or would have reached State Pension age)

If you are a woman who is widowed while you are still under State Pension age, you will not be able to get extra State Pension based on your late husband’s contributions if you remarry before you reach State Pension age. Similar rules will apply to widowers and survivng civil partners from April 2010.

If you put off claiming your State Pension, you can choose to claim a lump sum payment instead of extra State Pension.