User talk:Lexin

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Hello, Lexin! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Shalom Hello 16:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC) Getting started Wikipedia tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

[edit] National Insurance

Hello. I was wondering something the allocation of NI numbers and looked in the article National Insurance. I saw that my question was partially answered in the section on National Insurance Numbers, but there were no sources provided for the information. None of the references or external links seem to include the information either, but I suspect you know, and hope you know of a reference that we could use.

I really wanted to know more about the process of allocating numbers, since my youngest sibling just received their NI number and we notice the consecutive pattern. What puzzles us is that the age gap between the oldest and youngest sibling is quite large (over a decade), so were all the numbers reassigned when the youngest was registered for child benefit? Or was the whole sequence kept free from the moment the oldest was registered, with some assumption made over the maximum number of children that would be born? Or were the numbers assigned from the issuing of the eldest's NI number? If someone hadn't made it to 16, would there be a gap in the sequence?

Also, I notice the suggestion that the year in which a number was issued can be guessed from the letters at the beginning; is there a guide to this somewhere public?

I'd be grateful for any answers you can give, and even more so if you could provide references I could put into the article.

Thanks. Skittle 12:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The public reference is here [1], which is the National Insurance Number section of the HMRC website, though part of what I know is because I'm a civil servant who used to have access to the computer. That's why I didn't put it on the main article, I'm a primary source.

I have no idea on what basis the Child Benefit and NIRS2 computer talk to each other, but I suspect the numbers were assigned when the eldest child reached 16 - the computer would know from the existing data that there were siblings, and how many. Perhaps if the children had been more than 16 years apart, the numbers would not have been consecutive.

I know this has not always been the case, anyway. I was born in the early 1960s, and my number begins WP. My brother is two years younger than me, and his number begins WN.

As far as I know there is no public list of when the prefixes were being assigned - however such a list does exist, because I was issued one in the days when I was a National Insurance Inspector to assist me in identifying false numbers.--Lexin 18:20, 10 September 2007 (UTC)