HMRC Letters to 311,000: Are You Owed £8,000 in Pension?

Charlotte Baroukh

Tax Expert @ Pie

3 min read

HMRC is writing to 311,000 people who may be missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) on their National Insurance record, a gap that could mean a smaller State Pension than they're entitled to. It mainly affects parents and carers, including many self-employed people and sole traders, who took time out of work between 1978 and 2010. Letters go out between now and the end of March 2027, with 215,000 going to people already above State Pension age.

What Is Home Responsibilities Protection?

HRP was a scheme designed to protect the State Pension of parents and carers who reduced their working hours, or stopped working altogether, to look after a child or a family member with a long-term illness or disability.

The trouble is, if you claimed Child Benefit before May 2000, you weren't always asked for your National Insurance number. Without it, HMRC couldn't always link the HRP entitlement to the right record, which means some people's National Insurance history has gaps that were never meant to be there.

For anyone still working towards State Pension age, correcting this could increase what you eventually receive. For anyone who has already reached State Pension age, it could mean a lump sum of back payments. It's also a good moment to check your wider State Pension forecast, since HRP is only one of several things that can affect what you're entitled to.

Why This Matters If You're Self-Employed

If you run your own business, whether that's freelancing, contracting, or a small trade, and you took a break or scaled back to care for a child or family member at any point since 1978, this applies to you just as much as anyone in employment.

Self-employed parents and carers are just as likely to have gaps in their National Insurance record from this period, since HRP was never dependent on how you earned your income. It's worth brushing up on how National Insurance works when you're self-employed so you know exactly what's building up your entitlement.

Keeping on top of things like this is part of good record-keeping generally, alongside your day-to-day self-assessment obligations. If you're managing your own tax affairs as a sole trader, Pie Tax is built to make sense of your income tax position worth applying to a pension check like this one.

How Much Could You Be Owed?

Since HMRC began writing to people about this in September 2023, more than 25,000 people have had HRP added back to their record.

Nearly all of them had already reached State Pension age, and together they've shared more than £100 million in arrears. The average payment has come to around £8,000.

Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis has gone further, warning that for someone with 13 missing years who goes on to live another 20 years in retirement, the value could run to £100,000 or more over the course of their retirement.

He's also been clear that the onus is now on individuals to check for themselves, since HMRC isn't proactively contacting everyone who might be affected.

Do You Need to Wait for a Letter?

No. You don't have to wait for HMRC to get in touch. The quickest way to check is to use the Government's online HRP eligibility tool, and you can submit a claim online too.

If you do receive one of the new letters, it will now come with a CF411 claim form enclosed, so you can fill it in and post it back without having to track the form down yourself.

There's also a separate route if you spent at least 35 hours a week caring for someone with a long-term illness or disability between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 2002.

To qualify this way, the person you cared for needed to have been receiving Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance at the middle or highest rate for personal care, or Constant Attendance Allowance, and that benefit needed to have been paid for 48 weeks of each tax year from 6 April 1988 onwards (or every week before that date).

If you were receiving Carer's Allowance during this period, you don't need to apply. You'd have received National Insurance credits automatically, though it's still worth double-checking your record to be sure nothing slipped through. And if you do spot a genuine gap that HRP doesn't cover, it's worth reading up on when it makes sense to pay voluntary National Insurance contributions to fill it.

One Thing Worth Repeating: It's Free

Claiming HRP costs nothing. HMRC's Chief Customer Officer, Myrtle Lloyd, has said the hope is that including the claim form directly in the letter will make it easier for people to find out quickly whether their entitlement will increase.

There's no need to use a reclaims firm or any third party that charges a fee for this, since the process is designed to be done directly with HMRC.

Worth noting too: HRP was replaced by National Insurance credits in 2010, so if you started claiming Child Benefit after that date, this particular issue doesn't apply to you.

If you think you might be affected, checking your eligibility only takes a few minutes, and if you need help, the National Insurance Helpline is on 0300 200 3500.

Keeping Your Wider Tax Affairs in Order

A missing pension credit is the kind of thing that's easy to overlook when you're focused on the day-to-day of running a business.

It's a good prompt to take stock of your tax and financial admin more broadly.

Find out how Pie Tax works if you want a clearer picture of your self-assessment position alongside sorting out your State Pension record, or try Pie today to get started. You can also download the app to keep on top of things on the go.

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