State pensioners aged 80 and over can add up to £5,496.40 extra per year to their State Pension by making one claim.

Eligible retirees with either a basic State Pension of less than £105.70 per week, or no basic State Pension at all, can claim an ‘over 80 pension’ from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). If you are a man born before April 6, 1951, or a woman born before April 6, 1953, then you’ll get the basic State Pension, which is now worth up to £176.45 per week if you get the full rate. This is thanks to a 4.1% uprating from April 7, which increased weekly payments from the previous rate of £169.50.

To get the full weekly payment, men born between 1945 and 1951 usually need 30 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI), or 44 qualifying years if you were born between 1945 and 1951. By comparison, women born between 1950 and 1953 usually need 30 qualifying years, and those born before 1950 need 39 years.

So if you have less than the full number of qualifying NI years then your State Pension payments will be less than £176.45 per week.

If your pension payments are less than £105.70 per week – and you’re aged 80 or over – then you could top up your weekly earnings by claiming the over 80 pension from the DWP.

If you’re eligible, the amount you’ll get will depend on how much basic State Pension you get – if any – but if you’re getting less than £105.70 weekly, then you could get the difference paid up to this amount.

The DWP says an 80 year old who gets £43 per week basic State Pension, for example, would get an extra £62.70 to top up their weekly amount to £105.70. So over a year, this would add up to £5,496.40 extra to your pension.

This pension scheme is only available to those aged 80 or over and you cannot claim it if you reached State Pension age (currently 66 years old for men and women) on or after April 6, 2016.

You must have been a UK resident for at least 10 years out of a 20 year period, which must include the day before you turned 80 or any day after, or you were ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK, the Isle of Man or Gibraltar on your 80th birthday, or the date you submitted your claim for the over 80 pension.

Unlike the basic and new State Pension schemes, your eligibility for the over 80 pension isn’t based on National Insurance contributions. Claimants should also note that the over 80 pension counts as taxable income, so if you’re claiming any other benefits these could be affected.

You can apply for the scheme by requesting a claim form from your local Jobcentre Plus, or by calling the Pension Service on 0800 731 7898. The earliest you can submit a claim is up to three months before your 80th birthday, or any time after.