Glossary · UK
What is Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP)?
A now-abolished scheme (1978 to 2010) that reduced the number of qualifying years needed for State Pension for parents and carers, since converted into National Insurance credits on the new State Pension.
Full Definition
Home Responsibilities Protection was a scheme that ran from 1978 until it was replaced by National Insurance credits in April 2010, designed to protect the State Pension of parents and carers who were not working, or not earning enough to pay National Insurance, because they were looking after a child or a person with a disability. Rather than crediting a full qualifying year in the way modern NI credits do, HRP worked by reducing the number of qualifying years a person needed to get a full basic State Pension, based on the number of complete tax years they spent receiving Child Benefit for a child under 16 or caring for someone receiving certain disability benefits. When HRP was converted into Class 3 National Insurance credits for anyone reaching State Pension age after 6 April 2010, some people's records were converted incorrectly or incompletely, particularly for years before 1978-79 CB claim records were fully digitised or where a claim was made in a spouse's name rather than the actual carer's -- HMRC and DWP identified this as a significant, widespread underpayment issue affecting mostly women who took time out of work in the 1980s and 1990s, and launched a dedicated online tool and correction exercise from 2023 onward so people can check their National Insurance record and claim missing HRP, which can meaningfully increase their State Pension.