Older state pensioners handed £1,661 payments every four weeks with AP rule

Older state pensioners can get paid a bumper £1,661.76 every four weeks thanks to a scheme now closed-off and unavailable to younger, post-2016 state pensioners.

While older state pensioners who hit state pension age before April 2016 usually get paid less by the DWP in their state pension payments than younger state pensioners on the new state pension, there is a set of schemes, now defunct, which can push older pensioners’ incomes higher than a new state pensioner in some circumstances.

The old state pension is currently worth £184.90 per week maximum for an older state pensioner who hit state pension age before April 2016, and has a full National Insurance record, while the new post-2016 payments are worth up to £241.30 maximum per week, which of course is higher. However, there are some older DWP schemes which new state pensioners can no longer access that could boost pension payments higher than those for new state pensioners.

Additional Pension is the umbrella term for a range of extra pension schemes which older state pensioners were able to make use of before the basic state pension was phased out and replaced in 2016 with the new state pension. AP includes schemes like State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) and Second State Pension.

Though it can no longer be claimed by state pensioners retiring now, those who took part in the schemes, usually through work, can still get AP payments from the DWP paid for every four-week period.

The maximum AP payment is capped at £230.54 per week from April (almost exactly the same as the new state pension payments) – and this is paid out on top of the normal basic pension amount. Though state pension figures are often reported as weekly figures, the DWP state pension payments are actually paid every four weeks.

That means that for every four-week period, older state pensioners can get up to £922.16 from their state pension AP payments.

So over each four-week period, an older, basic pre-2016 state pensioner can collect a maximum of £1,661.76 if they have maximised both their National Insurance record for the basic state pension payments and have the maximum AP entitlement possible from these two figures combined.

Consumer magazine Which? explains the AP situation: “The amount of additional state pension you’ll get depends on how many years you paid National Insurance for, how much you earned and whether you contracted out of the scheme.

“The maximum additional state pension you can get in 2026-27 is £230.54 a week (not including state pension top-up).”

Unfortunately, these AP payments are not exempt from tax and will not be given a special exemption in future, as revealed exclusively by the Express.