National Insurance applying after nearly 5 years

[gg234]

Hi Guys,

I am working for a company for the last 5 year on WP and my employer is paying tax and NI wiithout fail i have all my p60 forms but all these years i have not applied for National Insurance number now i am planning to apply NI and after that ILR.All these years my tax and NI is going to emergency tax i believe.

Is it ok if i apply my NI number now and apply for my ILR.

Thanks for your help

Best Regards
Sridhar

[kawasaki1]

The main issue UKBA would have is non-payment of NI. Given yours was being payed by employer (as part of PAYE presumably) and you have all the evidence for this then you should have no issues, even though contributions were going to a temporary number.

Getting a real NI number to replace your temporary one is relatively straight forward but does typically require a trip to the jobcenter for interview/document check.

[dnicky]

This seems strange in that you did not apply for NI during your 5 years of work/stay in the UK. Was it sheer ignorance or was there any specific reason not to apply for one earlier?

[Farooqp]

I had a similar experience. My employer paid NI from my salary using a temporary NI number for 1 year. It was company's accountant fault not to inform me about this as I was new in the country at that time and had no idea about rules.

When I finally applied for NI no, I was told by job center that my previous contributions will automatically be linked with new NI no and I don't need to do anything. However, i intend to confirm this by calling job center before I apply for ILR in a year's time.