Home Responsibilities Protection

You are entitled to Home Responsibilities Protection if you are receiving Child Benefit for a child under sixteen, receiving Income Support because you are caring for a disabled person (unless you receive Carer’s Allowance, in which case you will receive N.I. credits, see National Insurance Credits), or if you are acting as a foster parent or foster carer. Home Responsibilities Protection is not the same as National Insurance Credits, but essentially works the same way. Instead of crediting you for contributions you did not pay, it reduces the total number of years that you are required to pay contributions in order to qualify for benefits including State Pension. Thus if you are unable to work for three years and these years are recognised as qualifying for Home Responsibilities Protection, the number of years you need to pay contributions will be reduced accordingly, that is, by three years.

In order to claim a full basic State Pension on retirement, you will not be able to use Home Responsibilities Protection to reduce the number of qualifying years you need on your National Insurance record to less than twenty years. This means that if the number of qualifying years required on your National Insurance record for you to receive a full State Pension has already been reduced to twenty, you will not be able to benefit from Home Responsibilities Protection further even if you continue to meet the requirements.