Armed forces pension increase 2024
The armed forces pension increase for 2024 is 6.7%, applied from April 2024. Like other public service pensions, armed forces pensions are uprated each April in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).
Key takeaways
- The 2024 increase is 6.7%, based on the September 2023 CPI figure.
- It applies to armed forces pensions in payment from April.
- Preserved pensions are also revalued each year until you draw them.
- The increase is index-linked to CPI, so it varies year to year.
What the 2024 armed forces pension increase is
The armed forces pension increase for 2024 is 6.7%, applied from April 2024. It is the yearly uprating, often called the Pensions Increase or PI, that keeps your armed forces pension broadly in line with the cost of living. It applies across all three schemes, AFPS 75, AFPS 05 and AFPS 15, and it is set by the Treasury through the Pensions Increase (Review) Order, not by the MOD or Veterans UK. Once your pension is in payment or has been preserved, it does not stand still; it is index-linked, so it grows each year to protect what your service is worth in real money.
The 6.7% figure comes from the Consumer Prices Index, the CPI, measured to September 2023. That September reading is what feeds the following April's uprating. So the rise that landed in April 2024 reflects inflation up to September 2023, not the inflation rate on the day the money reached your account. This September to April lag is normal and applies to most public service pensions, not just the forces, which is why a year's increase can look out of step with the headline inflation number you were hearing on the news at the time it was paid.
The 2024 increase was a notably large one by historical standards, and that was no accident. It tracked the burst of high inflation seen through 2022 and into 2023, captured in that September 2023 CPI reading. For pensioners it meant a meaningful real-terms top-up to gross income at a point when prices had been rising fast. The calculator on this page lets you turn the 6.7% percentage into a concrete pounds figure against any pension you enter, so the abstract rate becomes a number you can actually plan around.
How the annual CPI uprating works
The mechanism is the same every year, only the percentage changes. Each April, qualifying armed forces pensions rise by the CPI figure measured to the previous September. For 2024 that was 6.7%, from the September 2023 CPI. You do nothing to claim it. Veterans UK applies it automatically, and your payslip or annual statement reflects the new gross rate from the start of the new tax year. There is no form to complete and no decision to make; the increase is a feature of the scheme, not a benefit you opt into.
Using the September figure rather than a live, up-to-the-minute rate is deliberate. It gives the Treasury and the administering bodies a single confirmed number to work from, and it gives the same uprating to every public service pension in the same year, so forces pensions, NHS pensions and teachers' pensions all move by the same percentage. The trade-off is the built-in lag. By the time the April 2024 rise was paid, inflation had already started to ease from its peak, so 6.7% could feel generous against the current rate of price rises, even though it was simply mirroring where prices had been the previous September.
CPI uprating is one of the genuine strengths of the armed forces schemes. A pension that rose by a flat cash amount, or not at all, would quietly lose value as prices climbed. CPI linking means a pension worth a certain amount in real terms should stay worth broadly the same in real terms over a long retirement. In a high-inflation year like 2024 that protection is at its most visible, because the percentage uplift is large enough to notice on the payslip rather than disappearing into the rounding.
Who receives the 2024 increase
The 6.7% increase reached a wide group. Anyone drawing an armed forces pension in payment for a full year received it in full from April 2024. That includes AFPS 75 immediate and deferred pensioners, AFPS 05 pensioners, AFPS 15 pensioners, and the holders of survivor and dependant pensions already in payment. Early Departure Payment income that has reached the point of being uprated also rises with the same increase. In short, if your pension was a settled, in-payment income, the 2024 rise applied to it.
Preserved pensions were uprated too, even though they were not yet being drawn. A preserved or deferred armed forces pension keeps its inflation protection while it waits, so the 2024 increase was added to the stored value of those pensions just as it was to pensions in payment. This matters because it means people who had left service years earlier, and were not yet old enough to claim, still saw their future pension grow by 6.7% that year.
Two qualifications are worth flagging. First, a pension that only came into payment partway through the previous year may have received a pro-rated slice of the increase in its first year rather than the full 6.7%, after which it picks up the full amount. Second, members on AFPS 75 or AFPS 05 who are below age 55 and drawing an early or immediate pension may not have seen the 6.7% land as an annual rise, because those pensions are held flat until 55. That flat-rate quirk is covered in its own section below, and it is expected behaviour rather than a missed increase.
In-payment versus preserved pensions in 2024
A pension in payment is one you were already drawing in 2024. The 6.7% was added to your gross annual pension and your monthly payments rose from April. There was nothing to claim and nothing to sign; the new rate simply appeared on the payslip. The same automatic uprating applied to survivor pensions in payment and to EDP income that had reached the uprating stage. For an in-payment pensioner, 2024 was a straightforward year: a single confirmed percentage, applied across the board.
A preserved pension is one earned but not yet drawn, usually because you left service before pension age. The key point is that a preserved armed forces pension did not lose its inflation protection while it waited through 2024. The 6.7% was applied to the stored value, so that when the pension is finally claimed, at age 60 for AFPS 75, age 65 for AFPS 05, or State Pension age for a deferred AFPS 15 pension, the amount reflects all the cumulative uprating since the member left, including that 2024 step. A pension preserved several years ago is worth materially more in cash terms than the figure on the old discharge paperwork, and the large 2024 increase added a visible chunk to that.
The older schemes carry a quirk that catches people out, and a high-inflation year like 2024 made it more noticeable. Under AFPS 75 and AFPS 05, an immediate or early pension is held flat until age 55. At 55 the entire accumulated inflation since leaving is applied in one go, and from then on the pension rises by CPI each year. So a member drawing an AFPS 75 immediate pension at, say, 43 in 2024 may have seen no annual rise, while a member over 55 saw the full 6.7%. The first case is not an error; the catch-up at 55 restores the value, and this calculator estimates the current-rate position rather than projecting that year-by-year path.
How 2024 compares with nearby years
The CPI link cuts both ways, and the years around 2024 show its full range clearly. The 6.7% for April 2024 was a large increase, driven by the high September 2023 CPI reading. The following year was very different: the April 2025 increase was 1.7%, reflecting how much inflation had cooled by September 2024. Then for April 2026 the increase is 3.8%, sitting between the two. So in the space of three uprating cycles the armed forces pension increase ran from well above average, down to modest, and back up to middling.
That swing is the whole point of index linking, but it carries a planning lesson. No single year is typical, and a large increase one year tells you nothing reliable about the next, because each year's figure depends entirely on the CPI reading the following September. A pensioner who banked 6.7% in 2024 should not have assumed the same again in 2025, and indeed got 1.7%. This is exactly why this calculator applies one confirmed year's rate rather than projecting a compounded forecast across decades; stacking guessed future increases on top of each other produces impressive but unreliable numbers, which is the wrong kind of confidence on a subject as serious as your pension.
What does compound reliably is the protection itself. Even mixing large and small years, a pension uprated by CPI year after year holds its real value across a long retirement far better than a fixed income would. A pension drawn at 60 and held into your eighties will be uprated more than twenty times, and a single big year like 2024 lifts the base that every later increase is then applied to. That cumulative, lock-in effect is the real reason an index-linked armed forces pension is worth so much more than a fixed annuity of the same starting amount.
Worked example for 2024 (illustrative)
Here is an illustrative example using only the confirmed 6.7% rate for 2024. Treat it as a guide to the arithmetic, not a forecast of your own pension. Suppose a veteran was drawing an armed forces pension in payment of 14,000 pounds a year and had held it for a full year. The April 2024 increase of 6.7% applied. The rise is 14,000 multiplied by 0.067, which is 938 pounds. The new annual pension is 14,938 pounds, or about 1,245 pounds a month gross before tax, up from roughly 1,167 pounds.
Now take a preserved pension as a second illustration. Imagine a leaver had a preserved AFPS 05 pension that, after the increases applied since they left, stood at 6,000 pounds a year in early 2024, waiting to be paid at age 65. The 2024 increase added 6,000 multiplied by 0.067, which is 402 pounds, lifting the preserved figure to 6,402 pounds before it was even claimed. This shows why the number on an old discharge statement understates what will eventually be received: the pension keeps working in the background, and a 6.7% year adds a sizeable step.
A quick rule of thumb makes any 2024 figure easy to sense-check: for every 1,000 pounds of qualifying annual pension, the 6.7% increase adds 67 pounds. So a 10,000 pound pension rose by 670 pounds, an 18,000 pound pension by 1,206 pounds, and a 25,000 pound pension by 1,675 pounds. Both worked examples above are illustrative and use only the confirmed 6.7% rate. Your real pension depends on your scheme, your rank and pensionable pay, your length of service, your age, and any commutation or EDP choices, so for a binding figure you should rely on an official forecast rather than any estimate, including this one.
Revaluation and AFPS 15 in 2024
AFPS 15 behaved differently in 2024 for members who were still serving, and the difference is worth understanding because it is genuinely good news for active members. AFPS 15 is a Career Average scheme, so each year you bank 1/47th of that year's pensionable pay into a pension pot. To stop those banked amounts being eroded before you retire, the pot is revalued every year. CARE stands for Career Average Revalued Earnings, and the word revalued is the one that matters. The annual revaluation, not the CPI Pensions Increase, is what protects a serving member's pot.
While you are still serving, the revaluation tracks earnings, specifically the Average Weekly Earnings index, rather than CPI. Earnings have historically grown a little faster than prices, so an active member's banked pension tends to keep pace with what people are being paid now rather than only with the cost of living. This is the mechanism that lets a public calculator approximate a serving member's pot as current pay multiplied by years of service, divided by 47, because each past year is kept roughly in line with today's earnings. So in 2024 a serving AFPS 15 member's accrued pot was protected by earnings revaluation, while the 6.7% CPI figure governed pensions that were already deferred or in payment.
The switch from earnings to CPI happens at the point your AFPS 15 benefits become deferred or come into payment. From that moment the earnings link ends and the standard CPI uprating, the 6.7% for 2024, takes over. So a serving member in 2024 benefited from earnings revaluation; a leaver or pensioner benefited from the CPI increase. Both are forms of protection, but they are not the same index, and mixing them up is one of the most common misunderstandings about how AFPS 15 grows. If you left service during the year, your benefits would move from one to the other rather than getting both.
How to check your own 2024 position
The most reliable way to confirm your numbers is an official forecast from Veterans UK. Serving members request one using form 12, and those with a preserved pension use form 14. These come from the team that actually administers your pension, hold your real service record, and reflect your correct scheme, pay and any McCloud remedy choice. This site is independent and provides estimates only; it is not affiliated with the MOD, Veterans UK or JPAC, and nothing here is regulated financial advice. Use the calculator as a starting point, then verify against the official figure before making decisions.
If you were drawing your pension in 2024, check your April 2024 payslip or annual statement. The gross annual figure should have risen by 6.7%, assuming you had been in payment for a full year. If it did not move and you were under 55 on an AFPS 75 or AFPS 05 pension, that is the expected flat-rate behaviour to 55, not a mistake. If you were over 55, in payment for a full year, and the figure did not change, that is worth querying with Veterans UK. The per-thousand rule, 67 pounds for every 1,000 pounds of pension, gives you a quick check on whether the right amount was applied.
For McCloud-affected members, the Remediable Service Statement is the document that shows how your benefits for the remedy period, 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, are treated under your legacy scheme versus AFPS 15. The 2024 increase applies to whichever set of benefits you ultimately receive, so make sure you are reading the 6.7% against the right figures. From 1 April 2022 all serving members build AFPS 15, and you need 2 years' qualifying service to earn a pension at all. If your statement and your expectations do not line up, raise it before making any irreversible choice.
Tax treatment and next steps
The 2024 increase was added to your gross pension, and your pension is taxable income in the normal way. So when the pension rose by 6.7%, the gross figure went up by the full amount, but the cash reaching your bank account rose by a little less once income tax was taken into account, because the increase sits on top of your other taxable income. Any tax-free lump sum you had already received, such as the automatic 3x lump sum under AFPS 75 or AFPS 05, is separate and is not affected by the annual increase; the uprating applies to the ongoing pension income, not to a one-off lump sum already paid.
A high-inflation year like 2024 makes one tax point worth noting. Because the increase lifts your gross pension, a big rise can nudge your total taxable income upwards relative to frozen or slowly rising tax thresholds. That is not a reason to want a smaller increase, far from it, but if your pension plus any other income was near a tax band threshold, a 6.7% rise was exactly the kind of step that could move you across it. The increase and your tax position move together, so a larger gross pension and a slightly larger tax bill are two sides of the same coin.
As next steps, use the calculator above to see the cash effect of the 6.7% increase on your own starting pension, then sense-check it against the per-thousand rule of thumb, 67 pounds for every 1,000 pounds of pension. After that, treat any estimate here as a starting point and request the official forecast from Veterans UK using form 12 or form 14. If you are weighing up commutation, EDP timing or a McCloud choice, the annual increase is only one part of the picture, and our other calculators and guides cover those pieces so you can see how they fit together before you commit.
See your own numbers
Get your pension, lump sum and EDP in seconds.
Frequently asked questions
James Hartley
James Hartley spent 22 years in the British Army, including unit personnel administration and pensions and records duties, and now writes the scheme guides and scenario pages on this site. He is not a regulated financial adviser, so the content is general information rather than personal advice.
Sources: gov.uk · GAD factors · Veterans UK · Forces Pension Society · MoneyHelper.