Warning £234 a week state pension won’t be paid to 450,000 people | Personal Finance | Finance

About 450,000 people are set to miss out on an ‘uprated’ £234 a week state pension from 2025, a campaign group has warned.

Currently the state pension is £220 a week for those eligible for the retirement age benefit – assuming you have a full National Insurance track record to maximise your pension entitlement.

And every year thanks to a system called the Triple Lock, the amount paid out each week via the state pension is increased by one of three metrics: wage growth, inflation or 2.5 percent, whichever of these three is the highest.

Although the Consumer Price Index inflation rate for August 2024 has not yet been revealed – which is what next year’s triple lock figure would be calculated from in terms of inflation – current predictions place the next rise at a £234 state pension payout per week from April 2025.

Now a campaign group called End Frozen Pensions is calling for a change to the law regarding pension payments for expats.

Because of quirks in agreements between the UK and some other countries, expatriates who left the UK and live in certain nations won’t be eligible for a pensions uplift via the triple lock, despite having paid in during the time they lived and worked in the UK. For example, those living in the USA receive pensions upratings, but those in Canada do not.

The group said: “Anne is 99. She served in the Second World War and worked in the UK up until the age of 76. She paid her National Insurance in full. But the British government now thanks her with the indignity of a ‘frozen’ pension.

“Anne’s pension was ‘frozen’ at £72.50 per week when she left the UK for Canada to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. Her pension doesn’t increase in-line with inflation so it falls in real value year-on-year. If she had stayed in the UK she would be getting £156.20 per week. Astonishingly there are around 450,000 British pensioners in similar positions, most of whom live in Commonwealth countries, whereas other countries like America and the Philippines are unaffected.”