Voluntary NI Contributions by Direct Debit

I am currently paying voluntary NI contributions by monthly direct debit following advice from the Future Pension Centre that I required 'two years' extra payments in order to ensure I receive the maximum State Pension possible at age 67. Question 1: I'm now not clear what they meant by 'two years'. Does that mean 24 months from the date I started paying (Sept 2021). Or does that mean two full tax years (2022/2023 and 2023/2024)? Should I stop the payments now, as 24 months have passed, or do I wait until next March? Question 2: I'm guessing that I will need to manually cancel the payments at the appropriate time as I don't remember there being an end date on the DD mandate I filled in. How do I do this? Do I just cancel the DD, or do I need to notify HMRC? I'd be very grateful for any advice.

Hi Gary,
The period of 2 years will be for two whole tax years.
The direct debit will end on your retirement date regardless, but you will need to monitor the collections against the schedule we provided.
Please contact the NI helpline to discuss your current situation to help you decide when to stop the voluntary direct debits. 
National Insurance: general enquiries
Thank you. 

 

You should check your National Insurance record online. If you started paying in September then you will have paid 7 or 8 months contributions for the year you started paying in, in which case you will not have a full year. Your record for 2022/2023 should now be available online so you should see a full year for that. If you are still paying contributions for this year (2023/2024) then you will not have a full year until the final payment in March or April (I think they are paid in arears so April). This means you will get 2 full years contributions added to your record (22/23 and 23/24). You will also have a partially complete year (21/22) which you can top up if needed, but if not, then due to the poor advice you received you will have wasted the payments towards 21/22. The best thing to do is look at your NI record online and see what gaps there are and also at your pension forecast as that will tell you how many years you are short for the full pension

Thankyou both for the replies and apologies for the time I've taken to respond - I had login problems! Alan, I hadn't made it clear in my post but I had already checked my online account for NI and State Pension status - that's what prompted me to start the voluntary contributions. With hindsight I should have waited until the beginning of the following tax year (22/23) before I started payments, paid for a year, and then gone back and filled in the part year (21/22) with a lump sum payment. I did look at cancelling the Direct Debit now, and paying a lump sum to fill in that part year (21/22), but it's actually now cheaper to let the payments run until next April to complete the year 23/24. Whichever way I do it I'll have paid more than I needed to.