Additional State Pension - calculating your own entitlement

[buildersmate]

I wish to calculate whether the Pension Service are correctly calculating the additional pension that adds to the Basic State Pension, since I don't trust their ability to do it right. This question asks for anyone with specific knowledge or weblinks to the way this works.
Part of the answer is given here in Wikipedia - individual's SERPS or S2P add-ons are accrued annually according to one's contracted-in earnings each year between the LEL, LET and UEL thresholds, and then are subject to indexing. The total gets totted up.
http://en.wikipedia.o.../State_Second_Pension
But there will be some legislation that defines all the rules.
Anyone know where?

[DocHH]

Hello buildersmate,
Like you I did not trust our beloved Pension Service to accurately calculate any SERPS, S2P benefits. For that reason I Contracted Out as soon as I could, at least that way it was under my control. I Contracted Out to "with profit" schemes, both of which have demutualised, giving me demutualisation benefits. I did contribute many years ago to a superannuation scheme, which will apparently grant me a whole 6d (old money) per week.
I contracted back in about 5 years ago, when advised to by an IFA. I am sure you are well of the reasons why I did that, Goverment guarantees on pensions, shrinkiing annuity rates etc.
At the end of the day I doubt if there is any way you can calculate your benefits personally, even an actuary would be stumped on this one. We wouldn't need the Pension Service then would we? You can of course apply for a Pension forecast, but I am sure you know that. Sorry to take so much time to give you a non-answer.

[buildersmate]

Thanks for that. It is possible to work it out and most of the info is on record. It's the indexing detail I wanted to see from the horse's mouth.
Most of mine is contracted out - its the early career years I want to check.
The Pension Forecast merely tells you the answer is X, not the answer is made up of the following detailed elements.

[twix123]

Hi BM,
I'm not in SERPS as I was contracted out and already receive my occupational pension, but the following link may have the rates you require to verify the Pension Service figures:

http://www.paypershop...s-cat/pension254.html

[buildersmate]

Yup, I think that does it. Thanks Twix. Also it links to the Pensions Act 2007 which defines what future accrual rates will be.

[eihpos]

May not be of help to you at this stage, but I reached pension age this year- albeit deferred for a couple of months due to changes. I received a letter from DWP advising the pension I would receive followed by a further letter giving a complete breakdown of how this figure was calculated, including SERPS and contracted out periods. Perhaps a request for this breakdown would work. Good Luck