I 'went into drawdown' as the pension capital approached LTA a few years ago. (BCE 1) and took the 25% tax free lump sum. Too tempting to leave it vulnerable to political risk.
For a variety of reasons no income was taken from it until 7 years ago and the pension healed itself in the interim.
Since income drawdown started, the capital value has been subject to market growth in broadish equilibrium with income withdrawals.
The next BCE will occur at age 75 (BCE 5a) at which point a snapshot capital value, taking account of capital growth as a percentage of LTA, will again be assessed against whatever LTA then applies.

The relatively stable equilibrium of growth against income withdrawn has so far kept capital value reasonably close to LTA and so, accepting the unknowns of market performance, Rishi's rule- changing, and his repression of the income tax threshold ( I don't want to pay 40% ta on any of the income) it is possible BCE 5a will not hurt too much.
The approximate equilibrium might even benefit from advantageous changes - above inflation rise in tax thresholds or LTA etc, but ...maybe not.

fwiw, so far the pot has grown slowly but surely in size due restrained withdrawals (avoiding 40% income tax), but that can change of course.

That was the thinking but no claims to it being at all logical, wise, or even terribly coherent.

But taking big lump sums to then gift would presumably not be ‘regular pension withdrawals’ !?

What is your question about these contributions?

Any contributions to registered charities have nothing to do with IHT, whether donated during the lifetime of the benefactor or in their will.
If you are donating large sums I would suggest keeping receipts.

(I am currently an executer of a friend's will, who left her entire estate of about £750K to charities, so there is no IHT payable. The charities are being a bit of a pain to deal with, but HMRC quickly confirmed that no tax is due).

I assume that you are aware of donating via Gift Aid to increase the value of your donation and potentially to recover higher-rate income tax (if applicable).

Edit: Nothing to do with this thread, but for anyone planning to leave donations to charities in their will, be advised that leaving proportions of your estate to various charities can cause major hassles for your executers. It is much easier to leave set amounts to charities, as they then have no interest in other details of the estate.

Adding to Tim D's post, I have been dealing for close to a year with a late friend's will.

She left all her estate to charities, but unfortunately in various percentages of her estate (9 charities, with percentages ranging from 5% to 40%). My solicitor groaned at this, because every charity has the right to question everything we do (such as the cost of the wake, the sums achieved by selling her possessions, the cost of clearing her flat, etc).
If all the minor beneficiaries had been left fixed sums, with only one charity as the residuary beneficiary, only that one would have had to receive reports and grant authorisations for expenses.

Obviously a problem is that we do not know, when drawing up a will, what the final size of the estate will be, but leaving just percentages as our friend did has caused endless headaches and has also increased the solicitor's bills considerably.

Thanks, Tim, for that article as I have been thinking about the 10% charity idea.