State pension debrief

MILLIONS are looking forward to a 4.1% increase in the state pension next month thanks to the triple lock, but not everybody will get that.

- By Harvey Jones

Many older state pensioners will get a much smaller increase of just 1.7% in practice, often without realising what’s going on.

That’s down to a quirk in complicated state pension rules. So what’s going on?

The state pension is made up of several different elements, and not all benefit from the state pension triple lock.

The single-tier new state pension, paid to those who retire from April 6, 2016, benefits from full triple-lock protection.

That means it rises each year either with inflation, earnings, or 2.5% each year, whichever is highest.

In April, it will increase in line with the rise in earnings, which grew 4.1% in the year to September, while consumer price index (CPI) rose just 1.7%.

It will climb from today’s total of £11,502 a year to around £11,974.

Some 4.4 million get the new state pension, while around 8.6 million older retirees get the basic state pension.