Thank you for your request for information about the following:

I am writing to obtain information regarding General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay of £100,000 or more in the five most recent financial years (if possible ending in 2022-23). Please provide the information in the same format as FOI 29939.

To outline my query as clearly as possible, I am requesting:

1. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £100,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
2. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £150,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
3. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £200,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
4. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £250,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
5. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £300,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
6. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £350,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
7. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £400,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
8. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £450,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
9. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £500,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
10. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £550,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
11. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £600,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
12. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £650,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
13. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £700,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
14. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £750,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
15. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £800,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
16. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £850,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
17. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £900,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
18. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £950,000 in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.
19. The total number of General Practitioners who reported pensionable pay equal to, or in excess of £1,000,000+ in the five latest years for which full data is available, broken down by employing authority with which their practice(s) is registered.

If possible, please provide the information for the most recent full financial years (2018-19,2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23). However, if you do not have full data available for these years, please provide data for the most recent five financial years which you do have full data for.

You clarified your request as follows:

Can I request five separate tables for each of the past five financial years? Any time that a GP falls into the boundaries can they be included in that table for that financial year?

You also clarified that members who have had multiple employments with different employing authorities in the same year are counted only once with ‘England’ as the employing authority.

Your clarified request was received on 5 December 2023 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

The attached file contains an individual table for each of the last five Scheme years (2017/18 to 2022/23). The data is grouped by employing authority and Total Pensionable Pay (TPP) Bracket.

Caveats

All general practitioners (medical & ophthalmic), who have a contributing post in the period, are in scope for this data. General Dental Practitioners have been excluded.

TPP brackets are based on the sum of available TPP data for the respective financial year. This will include all employments which contributions were paid on, including non-practitioner posts.

TPP has been grouped in brackets of £50k.

Annual contribution data is only available when an annual update has been processed onto the member record for the respective employment.

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. Practitioners generally submit their contribution data in the year behind officers, hence why the YE 2023 non-updated figures are higher than previous years.

An employment record must be updated in sequential order – if one year of data is missing, all future years will also be missing.

Employing Authority is split into ‘England’ and the five respective Welsh Authorities requested, based on the individual employment code. This does not mean all Welsh practitioners are counted under a Welsh employing authority; for example, there are practitioners held under EA code 0604 - NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership (GP & Non-GP Partners) which by default will be categorised as England.

Members having multiple employments with different employing authorities in the same year are counted only once under ‘England’ as the employing authority.

Definitions

General Practitioner – An employment marked as having capacity code 03 (Medical Staff) or 10 (Ophthalmic Practitioner), and Employment Type 5 (Principal Practitioner), 6 (Assistant Practitioner) or 9 (GP Locum/ Locum Practitioner)

TPP – Total Pensionable Pay. The pay in which contributions have been based on – this is not uprated to wholetime equivalent and does not reflect a person's annual salary or reckonable pay.

Employing Authority – The organisation responsible for updating each member’s pension record and managing their employment.

Fewer Than 5 Pensioners

Please be aware that I have decided not to release the figure where the total number of Pension members falls below 5. This is because individuals could be identified when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available.

This information falls under the exemption in section 40 subsections 2 and 3A (a) of the Freedom of Information Act.

This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as:

a) it is not fair to disclose personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress.

b) these details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the Pension members.

Please click the web link below to see the exemption in full.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40

Breach of Pensioner Confidentiality

Please note that the identification of Pension members is also a breach of the common law duty of confidence. A member who has been identified could make a claim against the NHSBSA or yourself for the disclosure of the confidential information.

The information requested is therefore being withheld as it falls under the exemption in section 41(1) ‘Information provided in confidence’ of the Freedom of Information Act.

Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/41

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.