Hi Jerbil,

Thank you for the continued updates - this is really useful information.

Carole
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The "extra" £10 of which you speak refers to the "Xmas Bonus" paid at some date between mid November and December. It is paid to the same recipient bank as the normal pension, but comes separately.
As for paying the 3 years back contributions, be sure that it will be worth while.
You should receive the full rate of WFA if you received it at that rate whilst resident in UK, as you say. Perhaps you could get them to add it to your NI account and cover a marginal degree of the missing contributions??
Re phoning abroad on 08* numbers, if you need to do a lot of non-spanish calls, have you looked into Voipstunt. Google them for access. Even the 0800 numbers are available free from here.
Regards  

Thanks for that.

I have never heard of a “Xmas bonus” before (probably because it is my first year receiving state pension). My brother and his wife, who are in the UK and who each received the £10 as well, seemed to think that it was a “cold weather” payment but, as the details appearing against it in my account (or rather my partner’s account as she gets all my money) don’t appear to reflect that and, although living abroad, I am entitled to WFP but I don’t think that I am entitled to cold weather payments, so you are probably correct.

As far as the three years payment of NICs is concerned, it appears that I will recover it in just over three years anyway so, assuming I live that long, as you say, it certainly is worthwhile. I have still had no acknowledgement of receipt of the monies, done by bank transfer to HMRC as per their website instructions, which is really annoying.

I have (or, rather, my partner has) now received £100 WFP. Whether that is the £100 that they were going to send me originally or the other £100 that they should have sent me, who knows? Of course, no one at DWP is responding to emails.

I have used Voipstunt in the past but, for a long period, my internet connection has been a poor GSM mobile-technology oriented signal and was useless for that and Skype, etc. However, I have recently installed a 5mbps system that has obviously improved on that so I may well reconsider it.
Thanks for the heads up.

Actually, talking about emails, I discovered a site called www.HMRCisshite.com today. Although I typically steer clear of sites with expletives in the title (although, it is true, I used to visit paypalsucks.com) it was interesting from two points of view, in as much as it referred me to a HMRC online form online.hmrc.gov.uk/sho...rm/DPU_SAR that entitles you to certain information under the Data Protection Act (the bad news being that they have 40 (probably working) days to comply).

The other thing is that (and I should have thought of this because I have used the ploy before with other companies), if you know the name of someone there, e.g. Fred Bloggs, you can invariably get hold of them by emailing fred.bloggs @ hmrc.gsi.gov.uk. Now, if I only knew the name of someone that worked there…  

For what it's worth we get pensions both from the state and Civil service and they are paid into a UK account. We then use a currency company on a monthly d/d to transfer over. The last one was done at 1.167. The rate you see quoted in papers etc is never going to be what you actually get. Currencies Direct dont charge anything if you have a d/d set up in place

You can also transfer the tax burden on your state pension to Spain by making the correct application. Therefore your Civil Service pension takes advantage of the UK allowances, and the state pension takes in the Spanish allowance. In some circumstances you can end up paying no tax at all  

Still at loggerheads with both DWP and HMRC, particularly with regard to refusing me to email me with my data.

The latest thing is that, shortly after my last post, I received documentation from DWP (in the mail of course, they just love cutting down trees) that says I can pay NICs for any of the years 1975-6 to 1995-6 in order to increase my pension to the full amount i.e. by another 3/30ths over and above the ones they told me about. They tell me this fully three months after I turned 65.

On talking with HMRC about this (and, of course, they apparently don't have any records of those early years so don't know what I am talking about), if I pay them (the cheapest three years are the first three on the list) the additional pension won't be paid retrospectively.

Now, this is where my complaints about them (both HMRC and DWP) refusing to email me, from an expediency point of view, are exemplified in as much as
a) up until I turned 65 I was never informed of this, the only years I was told, by letter and 'phone, that I could pay NICs for were 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-11
b) I have emailed and phoned DWP, since I turned 65, and not once have they mentioned that I could pay NICs for any other year, despite the fact that the letter had been sent out before my last phone call to them
c) As I said, I received the letter informing me that I could pay NICs for those earlier years more than three months after my 65th birthday (and, four weeks after it was mailed) so, effectively, they have cost me three months worth of pension at that higher rate which, although perhaps not a great deal of money in the grand scheme of things, is still more than £130.

Anyway, in all my emails now I CC Iain Duncan Smith at alambridesl @ parliament.uk
Whether he reads them or not is another matter.  

To be fair, if they had to answer every single query by email then I guess the backlog would grow. I must admit I have always known that I could pay to get more years, but then I rang them before I left and they told me I didnt need to bother because I only needed 30 years to qualify for a full pension. Jusdt depends on your date of birth I guess if its 30 years or more  

Just to recap, I wasn't in the UK for 26 years of my working life.

I didn't know how much to expect. I was amazed that I qualified for the 24/30ths that they said I did.

My point is that, at no time until three months after I turned 65 was I told that I could pay NICs for other than 8-9, 9-10 and 10-11, in order to make it up to 27/30ths.

Now, they tell me I can pay for any three years in the period 75-76 to 95-96, in order to make it up to 30/30ths.

Why was I not informed about this earlier, i.e. prior to turning 65, e.g. when they sent me a forecast? Because they don't pay retrospectively, I was out two months worth of money when they eventually mailed the letter. Why delay it even further by mailing me the information rather than emailing it to me? I was out a further month's worth of money due to that. I'm now out at least £130.