Home Responsibilities Protection

[OddCat]

My 88 year old neighbour has received a letter from HMRC re Home Responsibilities Protection. This is informing her that she MAY be entitled to an adjustment to her State Pension on the basis that she may have been looking after an under 16 year old, and receiving Child Benefit for that child, between 1978 and 1990, for which she may not have received the requisite State Pension credits. And that she may therefore have been underpaid State Pension for the last 28 years. She does not have a full State Pension. She receives circa £3,000 vs her husbands £12,000 as she did not have the full number if qualifying years in her own right having taken 15 years off work to raise children.

She did have a child under 16 for at least two relevant years and she was in receipt of Child Benefit for that child in those years.

The HMRC process for establishing whether she actually has a valid claim is somewhat convoluted. It seems to require her to have her year by year NI record to hand, to remember whether the Child Benefit was in her name or her husband's (there being a separate process for swapping that retrospectively if the latter) etc etc.

The favoured HMRC claim process is to do all of this through the Government Gateway. My neighbour has no internet and no Government Gateway. I am not minded to do all this for her online. Partly due to liability and partly because it is unacceptable to have a tech process aimed at the section of society least likely to have the necessary tech.

Has anyone encountered this and successfully attacked it manually?  If so, can you please confirm how you did it and in what order things needed to be done for best effect (NI record, Child Benefit Record etc) ?

Many thanks

[hajaba123]

Fill in this form

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-home-respons...

If you don’t get anywhere then ring the NI helpline https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-rev...

[OddCat]

Thanks hajaba

Has anyone on here actually progressed things to a successful claim ?

[hajaba123]

I progressed it to a ‘successful” no for my mum. Turns out she did have it applied, I’m not convinced they got it right but will give them a ring in the New Year
Is your neighbour is eligible then she”lll potentially get the lost pension backdated in a lump sum and correct level pension paid going forward so it’s worth doing

[OddCat]

Maybe it is a case of checking her year by year NI record to see if she was credited with a qualifying year for each if the years where she was also in receipt of Child Benefit.

What I don't understand is why HMRC can't cross reference that themselves as they gave the NI records and they have the Child Benefit recipient records.

Surely the only thing they couldn't do is allow for the Child Benefit being claimed in the name of the husband which can be switched across retrospectively - but would probably need the individual to physically claim for that.

It's a shambles.