National statistics

Private pension statistics

HMRC statistics on personal pensions, the estimated cost of pension tax relief, the annual and lifetime allowances, and taxable flexible payments from pensions.

Documents

Table 2

Table 6

Tables 7 and 8

Table 9

Quality report: Private pension statistics

Details

These statistics provide:

  • the number of members and value of individual contributions to personal pensions
  • the estimated cost of pension income tax and National Insurance contribution (NIC) relief
  • statistics on annual allowance and lifetime allowance charges
  • statistics on taxable flexible payments from pensions

Commentary is available in the main publication document. The methodologies used to produce these statistics are explained in the background and methodology document.

Some previous updates to these statistics can now be found on the National Archives website.

Published 30 September 2021
Last updated 27 September 2023 + show all updates
  1. The statistics have been updated with the latest outturn year available.

  2. The number of individuals withdrawing from a pension flexibly in Q2 2022 has been amended from 2,036,000 to 508,000 (table 9). Also, we’ve linked to the consultation on HMRC’s statistics publications.

  3. Page updated to include the latest edition of the statistics, now including the figures for 2020 to 2021 (Tables 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8) and up to the second quarter of 2022 (Table 9). We have also changed the name of the page to ‘Private pension statistics’.

  4. Updated table 9 and its accompanying commentary

  5. Updating the graphs with clearer aesthetics. Added a paragraph to 3.6 - Contributions in excess of the annual allowance (AA) to the Background and Methodology document. Removed the HTML for the Quality Report and added a link to a new page which holds the Quality Report.

  6. First published.