Request

a. The number of pensions scheme members where they have exceeded the standard annual allowance for each tax year from 2015/16 to the latest 22/23 i.e. where any growth in 95/08 plus any growth, where applicable, in 2015 combined is greater than £40,000. Please could this be broken down into those with Practitioner Membership and those without Practitioner Membership?

b. The number of schemes pays applications the pension scheme has received and how many it has accepted in respect of annual allowance tax charges, for each tax year from 2015/16 to the latest 22/23. Please could this also be broken down into those with Practitioner Membership and those without Practitioner Membership? a. From this number can you also identify how many Scheme Pays elections forms were from those members included & excluded in the numbers from question a this will indirectly tell us the number of those who were subject to annual allowance taper & completed a scheme pays election form Again, please split between Practitioner and Non Practitioner

c) How many annual allowance compensation policy application forms have been received, so far, for the 2022/23 tax year. Please could this be broken down into those with Practitioner Membership and those without Practitioner Membership?

d) In total how many active Practitioner pension records do not have the pensionable pay updated to 31st March 2022

On 13 October 2023 you clarified the following:

19/20 Comp Scheme applications received in 20233/23

Response

Requests (a) and (b)

A copy of the information is attached.

Request (c)

390 application forms for the 19/20 Compensation Scheme have been received between 01/04/2022 and 31/03/2023. 160 are for Officers and 230 are for Practitioners.

Request (d)

There are 24,417 active practitioners who have at least one employment not updated to 31 March 2022.

Caveats

This caveat applies to all data provided:

Figures are correct as at 25 October 2023 09:53 – the pensions data is live, and subject to change retrospectively as records are amended.

The following caveats apply to the data provided in response to specific requests:

Requests (a) and (b)

All annual allowance (AA) records between the 2015/16 and 2022/23 scheme years are in scope.

To have an AA record, the member needs to have all employments financially updated to the respective year end. There may be some members who do not have an AA record due to data issues or manual exclusions preventing an automatic calculation.

The creation of most Year End 2022/23 AA records are currently on hold, pending guidance relating to the McCloud regulations.

All relevant scheme pays records between the 2015/16 and 2022/23 scheme years are in scope. Members may have multiple charges in a single year; for the purpose of this FOI they have been included if they have at least one charge; irrelevant of the amount, whether it was voluntary or mandatory, or how many charges there were in total.

To answer questions (a) and (b) a table has been provided showing for each scheme year:

• The number of unique members who exceeded AA Growth

• The number of unique members who have a Scheme Pays record

• The number of unique members who have exceeded AA Growth AND have a Scheme Pays record in the same year

Exceeding AA Growth and having a Scheme Pays record are independent of each other; a member does not have to use Scheme Pays in the event of them exceeding AA Growth, and may have a Scheme Pays record even if they have not exceeded the standard AA Growth.

We only hold AA information on the NHS Pension Schemes; the member may have additional growth elsewhere which we cannot account for.

We do not hold information on rejected scheme pays applications.

Request (c)

Only 19/20 Scheme Compensation application forms received in the 2022/23 scheme year have been included. Members may be counted multiple times if they have submitted multiple application forms.

Request (d)

For question (d) members with at least one practitioner post that is missing the annual contribution update for year end 2022/23 have been counted once. This includes:

• any post which commenced after 1 April 2021 which has not been updated

• any post which commenced prior to 1 April 2022 which has not been updated

• any post which commenced prior to 1 April 2021, which has only been updated to 31 March 2021 or earlier.

A post not being fully updated does not mean the information has not been submitted by the employer; it may have been submitted and been unable to process onto the member record due to validation issues.

Definitions

Year End – The end of the scheme year, which runs from 1 April to 31 March

Practitioner – A member with any employment marked as employment type 5 (Principal Practitioner), 6 (Assistant Practitioner) or 9 (GP Locum/ Locum Practitioner). The employment does not have to be recent or ongoing.

Officer – Any member not categorised as a Practitioner

Exceeding AA – Total AA growth for the year is greater than or equal to £40,000

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.

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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/

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