Pensions
Your pension unlocks at 57 from April 2028. Some people keep 55.
The minimum age for taking a private or workplace pension rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028, and whether you keep 55 turns on two dates in 2021.
57 Minimum pension age from 6 April 2028
On 6 April 2028 the earliest age at which most people can take money from a private or workplace pension rises from 55 to 57, and the people who keep 55 are those whose scheme rules already gave them an unqualified right to draw earlier. HM Revenue and Customs is consulting on the regulations that deal with the people caught halfway across that line, and the consultation closes at 11:59pm on 28 September 2026.
What changes, and what it replaces
The normal minimum pension age is the age at which a pension can be paid without the payment being treated as unauthorised and taxed accordingly. A payment before that age is not automatically unauthorised — ill health is a separate route out, with its own rules. The age was introduced in 2006 and rose from 50 to 55 in 2010. Parliament legislated in the Finance Act 2022 for the next step, to 57, from 6 April 2028.
It is not the State Pension age. That is a different number on a different timetable. This is the age your own pot, or your scheme’s early retirement option, becomes reachable at all.
Who keeps 55, and the two dates that decide it
Some people hold a protected pension age of 55 or 56. Whether you are one of them turns on two dates that have nothing to do with your own birthday.
| The test | The date it is measured at |
|---|---|
| Your scheme’s rules allowed benefits to be paid before 57 | As those rules stood on 11 February 2021 |
| You held an unqualified right to take them at that age | Held before 4 November 2021 |
“Unqualified” means nobody else had to agree — not the scheme, not an employer, not a trustee.
A protected pension age belongs to one scheme at a time. HMRC’s manual says a member may have one under one scheme but not under another. It is not stuck there, though: someone with a protected age of 55 or 56 can transfer at individual arrangement level and keep that age in the receiving scheme. What it covers is narrow. It applies to the rights that moved, and not to sums the receiving scheme already held or anything paid in afterwards by contribution or transfer.
The route can also fail on a technicality. HMRC’s manual is explicit that where a transfer was requested before 4 November 2021 but the money ended up in a different scheme from the one asked for, that is not a pre-4 November 2021 requested transfer.
Council and NHS pensions
For the Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales, the government consulted between 13 October and 22 December 2025 on how to apply the change. Its proposal is that members who were in the LGPS immediately before 4 November 2021 keep access at 55. Members who transferred benefits in from another scheme are treated differently, and the detail matters: they would still hold a protected age for the transferred benefits, but the government proposes they could not take benefits from it, because the LGPS pays everything out of one pension account at the same time.
The NHS Pension Scheme puts it more bluntly. Minimum pension age is 55 in the 2008 Section and the 2015 Scheme, and the NHS Business Services Authority states that “the government intends to increase the minimum pension age to age 57 in April 2028”.
There is an older and separate rule in the 1995 Section, where the age turns on when you were a member. Anyone with membership between 31 March 2000 and 5 April 2006 has a minimum pension age of 50. That comes from a different change and is easy to confuse with this one.
Not every public scheme is in scope at all. The government’s policy paper says members of the firefighters, police and armed forces public service schemes will not be affected by the increase.
The thing people get wrong
That 2028 is far away. For one group it is not.
Anyone turning 55 in 2026 or 2027 who expects to take benefits around then is making arrangements inside the window these draft regulations exist to patch. They would treat members aged 55 or 56 on 5 April 2028 as having reached 57 in specified circumstances, so a payment already set in motion does not become an unauthorised one overnight on 6 April.
For that group the consultation is not the point. What settles it is whether the scheme administrator records a protected pension age, and whether anything done between now and 2028 — a transfer in particular — changes what that record covers. Our page on NHS pension contributions covers what comes out of your pay while you are still paying in. When you can take it out again is this question, and it is a separate one.
Where these figures come from
- Normal Minimum Pension Age Transitional Provisions Regulations — consultation — HM Revenue and Customs
- PTM062215 — Protected pension age: right to take benefits before age 57 — HM Revenue and Customs
- Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales: Scheme improvements (access and protections) — Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
- When can I retire? — NHS Business Services Authority
Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.