If you have worked for the Civil Service, you may be entitled to a Civil Service pension. We may not however, have a record of your pension if:
Follow the steps to trace your pension.
If you have a pension statement, payslip or evidence from HMRC showing you were a member of a Civil Service pension scheme, jump to step 3.
If you worked for another employer outside of the Civil Service, for example:
you should contact the administrator of your former employer's pension scheme. You can use the free online pension tracing service to find their contact details.
You may or may not be entitled to a Civil Service pension depending on certain factors, for example:
The rules have changed over the years, so please use the information in 'Part 2' to see if you qualify for a Civil Service pension..
You may or may not be entitled to a Civil Service pension depending on certain factors, for example:
The rules have changed over the years, so please use the information in 'Part 2' to see if you qualify for a Civil Service pension.
To qualify for a Civil Service pension you must have:
If you do not meet both above criteria, you wouldn’t qualify for a Civil Service pension.
In this case, we won’t have any record of your pension.
To qualify for a Civil Service pension you must either:
In this case, jump to step 3.
If you had less than 5 year’s qualifying service when you left employment, you will not be entitled to a pension. You should have received a payment from your employer when you left employment.
In this case, we won’t have any record of your pension.
To qualify for a Civil Service pension you must either:
In this case, jump to step 3.
If you had less than 2 year’s qualifying service when you left employment, you will not be entitled to a pension. You may have received a refund or chosen to transfer your benefits to another pension when you left employment.
In this case, we won’t have any record of your pension.
To qualify for a Civil Service pension you must have either:
In this case, jump to step 3.
If you had less than 2 year’s qualifying service when you left employment, you will not be entitled to a pension. You may have received a refund or chosen to transfer your benefits to another pension when you left employment.
In this case, we won’t have any record of your pension.
To qualify for a Civil Service pension you must have either:
In this case, jump to step 3.
If you had less than 2 year’s qualifying service when you left employment, you will not be entitled to a pension. You may have received a refund or chosen to transfer your benefits to another pension when you left employment.
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If you know you have contributed to a Civil Service pension, contact us with the following details:
If we find your pension, we will contact you with further details.
If you worked for another employer outside of the Civil Service, for example:
You can use the free online pension tracing service to find the contact details of the administrators of your former employer’s pension scheme.
If we contact you to tell you we couldn’t find your pension and you have followed steps 1 and 2 to confirm you qualify for a Civil Service pension, jump to step 4.
If you have followed steps 1 and 2 to confirm you qualify for a Civil Service pension and we have contacted you to tell you we can’t find your details, you will need to contact HMRC and ask them to provide you with a written record of your contracted out service. You can call HMRC on 0300 200 3500, or write to them at:
National insurance Contributions and Employer Office
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1AN
Once you have done this, jump to step 5.
Members of the Civil Service Pension arrangements were contracted out of the state second pension scheme (S2P) between 1978 and 2016, which means you’ll have paid a lower rate of National Insurance contributions and won’t have built up entitlement to the additional state pension. HMRC have a record of this and you are entitled to see this using a Subject Access Request (SAR).
When you have received the written record of contracted out service from HMRC, forward this to your former employer and ask them to send your pension information to Civil Service Pensions.
Do not send the information directly to Civil Service Pensions.
You will need to send your former employer any information given to you by HMRC, as well as:
Once your former employer provides us with your pension information, we will contact you with your pension details.