Retirement Age of 68 Brought Forward?

Last updated on April 10th, 2023

State Pension Age Proposed Changes

Today (19 July 2017) the government announced proposed changes to the State pension age as a result of the review that was undertaken and completed earlier this year by John Cridland.

Having studied the results of the review (you can find more details about it here), changes have been announced that would bring forward the date at which a retirement age of 68 will be introduced, once these proposals have passed through legislation.

Previously, the State pension age was due to rise to 68 in 2044 (you can see the timetable here) but the independent review has advised that this should be brought forward so that this new retirement age will come in from 2037.

Who is Affected?

This means that anyone who is born on or before 5th April 1970 would not be affected and their retirement age would remain as per the current legislation (you can check your retirement age by searching for your year of birth in the search bar in the right hand sidebar of this website or top menu bar on mobile devices).

For those who were born on or after 6th April 1978, their retirement age was set at 68 already in past legislation.

So for those who were born between April 1970 and April 1978, their retirement age would transition to age 68 between 2037 and 2039. This essentially means that there will be a transition period for those who were born between April 1970 and April 1971. Past incremental changes have happened like those set out below (please note that these are our assumptions based on the information that has been given out):

Date of Birth	Retirement Age
06-Apr-70 to 05-May-70	6 May 2037
06-May-70 to 05-Jun-70	6 July 2037
06-Jun-70 to 05-Jul-70	6 September 2037
06-Jul-70 to 05-Aug-70	6 November 2037
06-Aug-70 to 05-Sep-70	6 January 2038
06-Sep-70 to 05-Oct-70	6 March 2038
06-Oct-70 to 05-Nov-70	6 May 2038
06-Nov-70 to 05-Dec-70	6 July 2038
06-Dec-70 to 05-Jan-71	6 September 2038
06-Jan-71 to 05-Feb-71	6 November 2038
06-Feb-71 to 05-Mar-71	6 January 2039
06-Mar-71 to 05-Apr-71	6 March 2039
06-Apr-71 onwards	68th Birthday

Therefore, those born after 6 April 1971 would have a retirement age of 68 based on these recommendations

Why Increase the Retirement Age?

The complex reasons for the proposed increase in the State pension age can be found in the detailed report. But generally the reason for the increase is to make the State pension fair and equitable between those retiring now (and previously) and those retiring at a later date.

One of the key factors in this is to ensure that everyone spends the same proportion of their adult working life in retirement. Initially, when the State pension was first introduced in 1948, the average pensioner spent 23% of their working life in retirement. However, due to increases in life expectancy, by 2007, pensioners were spending around 32% of their adult working life in retirement.

In order to keep this percentage, and hence not to increase the massive cost of providing pensions, plus to allow everyone to spend a similar amount of time receiving their state pension, retirement ages will need to be increased periodically.

No Legislation Until next Government

However, there is no legislation planned for the current government and this will be left for the next government to put through parliament. This could possibly change things as Labour have said that they will keep the retirement age at 66 and that they believe life expectancy rates are levelling out. Therefore it will be necessary to wait until the next general election to see if these changes actually get passed.

Next Review

This is what today’s report says about the next review:

The next review, which will conclude by 2023, will consider whether rises beyond 68 are needed and when. However, the Government believes that setting some parameters for the future is important for individuals and for Government planning. In the long run, the Government is minded to commit to ‘up to 32%’ as the right proportion of adult life spent in receipt of State Pension.

Update: June 2019

Apparently these changes to bring forward the date that the state pension age will change to 68 will be looked at again in the next review. We knew that the changes would not be legislated until a later date but if the next review sees things differently then there is a chance they may not go ahead.

Update: March 2023

The next independent review has just been published and it recommended that the change to the SPa to age 68 is later than that recommended by John Cridland’s report in 2017 (i.e. as above) but once again we will need to wait to see if these new changes are legislated.