Can you retrospectively claim pension credits from child benefit?

[PiffleWiffleWoozle]

If you have a child under 12 but have not been claiming child benefit, can you retrospectively claim for the NI credits towards state pension entitlement?

I know you can’t claim the child benefit payments further back than 3 months, but not sure about the pension years?

Ohh I think it's 3 years but not sure I think it's recently changed.

Hopefully this will bump your post and someone with more knowledge will wander along and correct me lol 😂

Thank you!

Did you never claim CB or did you claim and then stop? Think there's different rules depending on which of the above was true.

P.s. you can have a claim but opt out of payment and still get NI credits

Thanks @dementedpixie

They have not previously claimed prior to this tax year, and are now claiming but opting out of payments to get the NI credits. They would have been eligible for a few years but did not realise about NI credits for those years at the time.

As far as I can tell they can only claim the NI credits retrospectively for up to 3 months so will lose the opportunity to claim for the earlier years?

Get them to ring and speak to someone. When I rang to start claiming the money again I was told that I could claim the last two years, so I got about £1000.
it’s worth ringing and speaking to them.

If you look on www.gov.uk you can login & view your individual National Insurance record

I believe that it says that you can fill the last 6 years only

You currently need 35 qualifying National Insurance years to be able to claim a full state pension, per person. You can do this via work or via some benefits. I believe that you can pay for some missing years (probably the last 6)

www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record