Ten million Britons to miss out on full £489 triple lock boost next April – Are you one of them?

The 3.9 per cent rise will push the full new state pension above £13,000 a year for the first time, reaching £13,036.

Meanwhile, the basic state pension will increase by £374 to £9,989, while around 420,000 pensioners living overseas will receive no uplift whatsoever.

The reasons behind the shortfall are varied.

Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) figures reveal that 2.3 million recipients of the new state pension receive a reduced amount, frequently because they were members of “contracted out” workplace pension schemes or failed to build up enough National Insurance contributions.

Their increase in April will therefore fall short of the headline £489.

A further six million pensioners claim the full basic state pension, where the maximum increase is limited to £374.

The 1.9 million drawing a reduced basic pension will receive an even more modest sum.

Many retirees across both schemes also receive supplementary payments, commonly referred to as Serps, which are uprated only in line with inflation rather than the triple lock, further widening the gap between the publicised figure and what actually lands in their accounts.

Andrew Tully, of Nucleus, said: “While the headlines will say the state pension is increasing by almost £500, the majority of people won’t receive that amount.

“The triple lock is a headline increase, but it’s certainly not a universal one.”

He added: “Millions of pensioners may also find that parts of their state pension only rise with inflation, leaving their overall increase below the figure that appears in the news.

“For many, higher tax bills and continued cost-of-living pressures will eat into the increase, making the headline rise feel less generous in practice.”

Tom Selby, of wealth manager AJ Bell, described the state pension as a “thicket of complexity” that routinely baffled those who depended on it.

He noted that despite the basic state pension being considerably lower than its newer counterpart, many recipients of the older scheme actually take home more thanks to additional entitlements such as Serps that are no longer available to newer claimants.

Pensioners who have emigrated to popular retirement destinations, including Australia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates receive no annual uplift at all.

Their payments have been frozen at the rate applicable when they either left the country or reached state pension age, whichever came later.

Official data shows that approximately 338,000 expats have a frozen basic state pension, with a further 82,000 on a frozen new state pension.

There are no plans to reverse this policy.

A DWP spokesman stressed that the triple lock was a percentage increase applied to full pension rates rather than a guaranteed cash sum, with individual payouts determined by each person’s National Insurance record.

“The triple lock isn’t a fixed amount of money, it’s a percentage increase applied to the full rates of both the basic and new state pensions,” they said.

“What people actually receive depends on their own state pension entitlement, including their National Insurance record.

“The £489 figure is therefore an example of what someone receiving the full new State Pension would get.

“The same triple lock percentage applies to the full basic state pension, although this results in a different cash increase.

“Our policy on frozen pensions overseas is longstanding, and we continue to uprate state pensions overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so.”