Publicity about the new flat-rate state pension starting next year may have misled many people into thinking they will get the flat rate £150 per week
But the Telegraph published its own estimate that 2 million people retiring in the next 5 years will get less than this, some much less. There are two main reasons: many haven’t paid enough National Insurance contributions, while another large group of employees ‘contracted out’ of the second state pension into private schemes, so they built up entitlement to private pensions and reduced their entitlement to the state pension.
The only way to be sure of what your own state pension entitlement will be is to ask for a pension forecast from the Department of Work & Pensions.