Using UK government gateway

[Joe22]

For those who may not know.

By calling the UK international pension service today to query something I was informed that changing any details such as addresses using government gateway although you can is not recognised by them. It has to be done by calling them.
Apparently, you have to be a UK resident to make any alterations made via government gateway stick.

Maybe some folk already know this but it wasn't obvious to me when using gateway.

[gerryh]

What is the "government gateway stick"?
Cheers
Gerry

[Joe22]

Sorry Gerry, instead of stick I should have put work. My bad.
It was relating to the fact you can change things but is of no use to non UK residents.

[Lavanda]

Good luck using the Government Gateway. Good luck ringing them or writing to them. They don’t acknowledge you exist and never reply but maybe that will change as the new UK government starts to tax everything that blinks.

[Manchesteral]

Don't worry about it, within a few months the work and pensions service will be contacting you to ask you to prove your existence via a life pension qualification they've been doing it to me every two years for the last four years!

[Curiouse]

My wife's pension forecast was calculated on 11 years to date but once we got onto the governments Gateway and looked at National Insurance History we realised that the pension Forecast was wrong , there are only 8 full qualifying years and 3 with only around half of the yearly credits which required .

I made an application online to annually pay Voluntary Class 3 National Insurance to include this year hoping we could pay at the end of 2024 . and 2025 so we can increase her qualifying years to the minimum 10 years or she will get nothing .

I used the option where you can check a date we would get the reply , it was May20th 2025 , that's 9 months just for a reply so i have no idea if we will be able to make the payment .

If there's a problem and we have to write back then assuming it takes 9 months to reply again it will be too late , i can see that when she reaches retirement age they will tell her , sorry but we made a mistake , you don't have enough qualifying years to receive anything , what a shambles

[Wicksey]

I would phone the pension service and speak to someone. We managed to pay an extra 5 years each to boost our pensions but 18 months ago we found it difficult to get through and it was only after complaining to the then Minister for Works and Pensions that we got help. Since then I think they've put more staff on the phone lines as when my OH rang to claim his pension last month he got straight through. The International Claims phone number is 0044 191 218 7777 and were very helpful. Not sure what else they deal with although there was the usual menu of press 1 for this and 2 for that. It may be worth trying.

The forecasts on the website can be confusing as they are presuming that you are continuing to contribute. There is another section that shows the amount based on contributions made to date which I think is the actual figure. You need to obtain an 18 digit number from HMRC once the amount to pay has been confirmed and you can do a bank transfer, they give you all the information over the phone. I wouldn't just send any payment without this payment number as it may not get credited.

[Curiouse]

Managed to talk to them yesterday on their chat line but you have to go through the BOT asking questions first then you get the option to speak to an agent , needs to be patient as it normally says " none available please call back " but a few hours later we got through to one who was helpful . She gave me the information i needed to make a bank transfer , i asked her how will i get conformation they received the money , answer was we would have to keep checking our contribution records as it will take around 43 weeks . I hope to God they received the money as a few thousand pounds out there in has left me nervous stupid that there's no way to even know they have it until its far too late to do anything about it.

We were told to always make payments for full years and they will work out which years to allocate it to based on the cost of the full years , part years cant be allocated .

The references to an 18 digit number that i have seen pasted everywhere makes no sense either , they didn't give me a number , just explained how to make mine up using personal date , in their example and in my case it amounted to 17 digits , possibly the 18 digit number is for people phoning and making arrangements to pay a pre determined amount or period , i was told i can make as many payments as i wish and for whatever years i wish as long as they were full years . I made a payment yesterday and another today so now i just sit and wait .

[Wicksey]

We were both given the 18 digit number by HMRC to use on the bank transfer and the payments were credited to our NIC account within a couple of months. We wanted to pay particular years and agreed the amount due with the DWP first and the years to which is would be allocated. We paid the latest 5 years (2017/18 to 2021/2, the 2022/3 records were not yet available when we paid last April). If you have spoken to someone and this is the advice you were given then perhaps this is another way to pay, although 43 weeks to allocate the money seems a bit much! I hope it all gets sorted out for you.