Hi All,
The 3 years of credits being discussed are most lightly due to Regulation 4-1 of The Social Security (Credits) Regulations 1975.
This regulation allocated 3 years of Class 3 credit to a persons NI record for the years in which their 16 th, 17 th and 18 th. birthdays fell. There was no requirement for the person to have been in the UK during those birthday years.
I went to the UK and worked for a summer in 1995. I was issued those credits against 1986, 1987 and 1988 when my National Insurance number was issued in 1995.
The regulation ran from April 1975 to April 2010.
The 3 years do not appear on my gov.uk NI contributions listing, but are counted in the total at the top of the webpage.
I did read some place that some credits may have been issued after the 2010 deadline and these are marked for deletion.