About PlainPension

Our mission is to make the UK retirement system transparent and freely accessible to every household. PlainPension helps employees, the self-employed, journalists, and policy researchers project their State Pension, workplace pension, and SIPP pot in plain English — without paywalls, account requirements, or advisor-style product steering. Every rule, rate, and threshold is sourced from DWP, HMRC, MoneyHelper, or the FCA, and date-stamped against the originating statutory instrument or guidance publication.

PlainPension provides State Pension forecasts, workplace Defined Contribution pot projections, SIPP calculators, and goal-mapped wrapper choice tools for UK savers navigating pension decisions. We do not recommend specific providers, funds, or advisers. We explain the rules so individuals can make informed choices — and where decisions are genuinely complex (Defined Benefit transfers, lump-sum recycling, beneficiary nominations) we direct readers to the regulated free guidance from MoneyHelper or to an FCA-regulated adviser.

Our Data

PlainPension's content derives from a small number of authoritative UK sources:

• DWP State Pension rates and rules: the annual rate uprating order, qualifying-year thresholds, and State Pension Age timetable.
• HMRC pension tax rules: the Annual Allowance, tapered allowance, Money Purchase Annual Allowance, tax-free lump sum cap, and Class 2 / Class 3 voluntary National Insurance rates.
• MoneyHelper guidance: the free, government-backed pension guidance service operated by the Money and Pensions Service.
• FCA pension provider register: the regulated population of UK SIPP, personal pension, and stakeholder pension providers.

Methodology

We translate DWP rate orders, HMRC guidance, the Finance Acts, and the FCA Handbook into plain-language explainers, decision tools, and calculators. Source figures are quoted directly from the originating publication and date-stamped — they are never paraphrased into a different number. For our full sourcing chain see the methodology page.

Updates

State Pension rates are uprated each April under the triple-lock formula; PlainPension refreshes its rates within 30 days of the DWP rate-uprating order being laid. Annual allowance, lump-sum cap, and other HMRC pension thresholds change at the discretion of the Chancellor (typically at Spring or Autumn Budget); we monitor HMRC's pension-scheme tax bulletins and refresh affected calculators promptly after each change.

Not Affiliated

PlainPension is not affiliated with the DWP, HMRC, MoneyHelper, the FCA, or any pension provider. We are an independent data publisher providing public information in a more accessible format.

Who Built This

PlainPension is published by ", an independent data-journalism publisher that compiles, verifies, and contextualises public datasets. We do not accept compensation from any pension provider, asset manager, or adviser we cover.

Editorial Process

PlainPension operates an editorial pipeline in which raw DWP, HMRC, and FCA data are loaded into our database from authoritative feeds. Briefs are then drafted and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy, plain-language clarity, and consistency with the underlying regulation. Numbers are never altered between source and display — only the surrounding summary and explainer text are written by us. Our methodology page documents the full source-to-publication chain.

Important Disclaimer

PlainPension is for informational purposes only and does not provide financial, tax, or pension advice. Pension decisions are highly personal and often irreversible. Consult an FCA-regulated financial adviser or use the free MoneyHelper service before making material pension decisions, especially around Defined Benefit transfers, drawdown, annuity purchase, or lump-sum withdrawal. Calculator results are projections based on the inputs and assumptions you enter — they are not a forecast of any specific outcome.

Why We Built This

The UK pension system is among the most consequential single decisions in personal finance, yet the rules are scattered across DWP rate orders, HMRC pension tax manuals, the Finance Acts, the FCA Handbook, and TPR auto-enrolment guidance. Most households first encounter their workplace pension as an auto-enrolment letter, never engage with their full New State Pension forecast, and never check whether voluntary Class 3 contributions would buy them missing qualifying years cheaper than any other return on savings. PlainPension exists to translate that statutory thicket into one place — calculators, comparisons, and decision aids that show the rule, the source, and the date the rule took effect. We want a sixteen-year-old reading their first payslip and a sixty-three-year-old approaching their State Pension Age to find the same plain-English answer to the same question, with no paywall and no upsell.

Limitations & Edge Cases

PlainPension covers the rules that apply to the typical UK saver — auto-enrolled employee, self-employed sole-trader, higher-rate taxpayer consolidating old workplace pots, or near-retiree assessing voluntary NI contributions. Several scenarios fall outside our scope and require regulated advice: Defined Benefit transfers above £30,000 (where regulated advice is statutorily required); contracted-out NI history pre-April 2016 (where the “starting amount” calculation under the new State Pension can be lower than the simple 35/35 reckoner suggests); lifetime allowance protections (FP2012, FP2014, FP2016, IP2014, IP2016) which interact in complex ways with the post-April-2024 lump-sum allowance regime; and overseas residence rules under the bilateral Social Security agreements. Where any of these apply we direct readers to MoneyHelper's Pension Wise service or to an FCA-regulated adviser via Unbiased or VouchedFor.

Editorial Independence

PlainPension accepts no payment, sponsorship, referral fee, affiliate revenue, or other compensation from any pension provider, asset manager, life insurer, IFA network, or advice firm we cover. Our only revenue source is Google AdSense display advertising, run through Consent Mode v2 with clear opt-in/opt-out controls on every page. Editorial decisions — which wrappers we cover, which providers we name in comparison tables, which rule changes warrant a methodology update — are made independently of advertising. If we ever introduce affiliate links (for example to consolidate-your-old-pots tools), we will disclose the relationship clearly on every affected page and continue to publish the wrapper-comparison rule explanations without paywall or login.

Corrections Policy

If a rate, allowance, or rule on PlainPension is wrong, we want to know. Email hello@plainpension.co.uk with the page URL, the value you believe is incorrect, and the authoritative source (statutory instrument, HMRC manual paragraph, DWP rate order, or FCA Handbook reference). We confirm receipt within two working days and publish a fix with a dated correction note on the affected page within ten working days if the original value was indeed in error. If we disagree we explain our reasoning and the source we relied on. Every correction is logged with a date stamp in our editorial change log so readers can verify what changed and when.

Our Editorial Standards

PlainPension follows a five-point editorial standard for every page that displays a pension rate, threshold, or rule. (1) Source. Every figure must be traceable to a named, dated source — the DWP rate-uprating order, an HMRC Pensions Tax Manual paragraph, an FCA Handbook reference, a Treasury Budget red book, or a MoneyHelper guidance article. We do not paraphrase secondary commentary into a different number. (2) Date-stamp. Every rate, allowance, and threshold carries the effective-from date set by the source publication. When a Budget changes a threshold, we apply the new figure from the legal effective-from date — not from the date our team noticed the change. (3) Plain-English explanation. Every statutory rule we cite is accompanied by a plain-language explanation of what the rule actually means for a typical saver. The plain-English explanation is editorial — our team writes it — but the underlying rule and the numbers are exactly as stated by the source. (4) Limitations. Every calculator and ranking page calls out the population it applies to and the population it does not — for example, the State Pension qualifying-year calculator applies to the post-April-2016 New State Pension regime, not to pre-2016 cases where the “starting amount” calculation can deliver a different result. (5) Corrections. Every page links to our corrections email address, and every correction is published with a date-stamped note explaining what changed and why.

Editorial Production Pipeline

PlainPension operates a continuous editorial pipeline. Source content from DWP rate-uprating orders, the HMRC Pensions Tax Manual, MoneyHelper guidance articles, and the FCA Handbook is loaded into our database from the originating publications and structured into briefs. Briefs are then drafted into long-form plain-English guides and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy, source-citation completeness, and statutory-rule fidelity. Every numerical claim is checked against the cited source paragraph, every date-stamp is set against the source publication's effective-from date, and every page goes through a human review pass before publication. The continuous editorial pipeline accelerates publication of new rate changes (typically within 30 days of a DWP rate-uprating order, within 14 days of a Budget threshold change) without compromising the source-traceability of any displayed figure.

Accessibility

PlainPension is designed to be readable on any device, in any browser, by any user. Every page passes WCAG 2.1 AA colour-contrast ratios in light and dark mode. Every interactive element is keyboard-accessible. Every image carries an alt attribute. Every form element carries an associated label. The site uses no autoplay video or audio, no pop-up modals that block the main content, and no captcha that gates access to the published information. If you find an accessibility issue — broken keyboard navigation, an unlabelled control, a colour-contrast failure, an image without an alt attribute — email hello@plainpension.co.uk with the page URL and the specific issue. Accessibility fixes are prioritised ahead of feature work.

How to Use the Site

PlainPension is structured around four primary surfaces. Guides are long-read plain-English explainers of single pension topics — qualifying years, auto-enrolment, drawdown vs annuity, MPAA, voluntary NI, Pension Wise, and so on. Each guide is sourced and dated and cites the originating DWP / HMRC / MoneyHelper / FCA reference. Research pages are server-rendered analyses driven by live SQL queries against our internal database — every figure on a research page is auditable to a single row in our state-pension-rates / pension-wrappers / ni-qualifying-years tables. Tools — the calculator, comparison, browse, and break-even surfaces — apply the same sourced data to interactive projection workflows. Analysis pages take a step back and contextualise PlainPension data against external benchmarks (the Real Living Wage, PLSA retirement living standards, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation minimum income standard). Together the four surfaces give a reader the complete arc from rule explanation to data lookup to interactive projection to societal context.

Last Reviewed

This About page is reviewed by the PlainPension editorial team after every Spring and Autumn Budget that affects pension tax rules, after every DWP State Pension rate-uprating order takes effect (currently each April), and at least once per quarter regardless. The current page reflects the 2026/27 tax-year rules as in force at the date stamp at the top. If you find an out-of-date claim on this page (or anywhere else on the site), email hello@plainpension.co.uk with the page URL and the specific sentence at issue.

Press & Citations

Journalists, policy researchers, and pension educators are welcome to cite PlainPension figures and short verbatim text under standard fair-dealing principles. We ask that citations include a link back to the specific PlainPension page used (not the homepage) so readers can verify the figure and the source. For longer reproductions, embedded interactive tools, or methodology questions, email hello@plainpension.co.uk — we respond within two working days and are happy to clarify how a given figure was derived, what the underlying SQL query is, and which DWP / HMRC / MoneyHelper / FCA paragraph the rule cited derives from.

Contact

For corrections, source-update notifications, or feedback, email hello@plainpension.co.uk or use our contact form.