Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

'How many gp principals , salaried gp and hospital consultants applied for early payment of nhs pension in each financial year , as a number and also as a proportion of all pension applications'

Date Range: 01/04/2016 – 01/04/2026

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 17 April 2026.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

Employment Type

You requested information on ‘GP principals’, ‘salaried GPs’ and ‘Hospital Consultants’, these titles don’t directly match our data. The categories we hold are:

• Principal Practitioner (GP principals)

• Assistant Practitioner (salaried GPs)

• Hospital Consultants

Our data does not allow us to identify hospital consultants separately, instead we have provided a list of all hospital medical doctors.

We have interpreted ‘early payment’ to mean early retirement.

A member is considered a practitioner, either principal or assistant, if they have ever held an employment position as a practitioner, as identified by the relevant codes.

Records are identified where the payable date falls within the requested date range of 01/04/2016 to 01/04/2026 (inclusive).

If a member has multiple payment records within this period, they are counted only once.

If a member has records with different employment types, they are counted separately under each employment type. For example, if a member has entries with employment types 05 and 06, they are counted in both categories.

Total volumes are the number of pension applications that went into payment in the year end, regardless of whether they were early retirements or partial retirements.

Percentages of early retirements categorised by employment type are calculated against the total number of pension applications that went into payment, regardless of whether they were early retirements or partial retirements. Hospital consultants who took early retirement constituted 1.4% of the total pension applications that went into payment during the period.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2026”. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.