Thank you for your request for information about the following:

The number of times over the past 3 years (either financial or calendar years) that the Payroll and Pensions Department for Southern Health Foundation Trust in Hampshire has sent a salary figure to NHS Pensions to calculate a staff members benefits when they are retiring which they have then later advised you is incorrect resulting in you having to re-calculate the figures.

Your request was received on 25 September 2023 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

For information, pay is estimated by employers for those retiring from active service, to enable NHS Pensions to calculate and pay benefits on time after retirement. The employer then notifies of the confirmed pay figure as soon as it is known, and any re-calculation is carried out and provided as a revised award (sub award).

The information below identifies all members whose primary employer is EA 6558 – Southern Health Foundation Trust where an AW171 (sub award application) has been received in the last 3 financial years relating to a change in Pensionable Pay.

Volume per year:

2021: 38

2022: 142

2023: 159

2024: 71

In order to meet the criteria of the request, ie “which they have then later advised you is incorrect resulting in you having to re-calculate the figures” – we would need to manually interrogate the files mentioned above and have estimated that this would take up to 15 minutes per case. To check all cases above this would take

38+142+159+71 = 410 cases

410 cases x 15 minutes per case = 6,150 minutes

6,150 minutes = 102.5 hours

Therefore, I estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the NHSBSA is not obliged to comply with your request and I will not be processing your request further as it currently stands.

If you were to make a new request for a narrower category of information, we may be able to comply with that request within the appropriate limit, although I cannot guarantee that this will be the case.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

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 2023” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

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

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.