Request

I am requesting information relating to employees whose last employment at time of application was with Newcastle Upon Tyne Foundation Hospital Trust ONLY in this period. In regards to Ill Health Retirement Applications (AWE33C) from the Trust across the aforementioned period could I ascertain: The number of applications in each year. The number of successful applications each year (broke down by Tier given if information held) or those who were successful in the period mentioned: If held, the primary category under which their Retirement application came under (Mental Health, Cardiovascular, Musculoskeletal etc) The average age of applicant Breakdown by gender A breakdown of Job Banding (if held) For those who were unsuccessful across the period mentioned If held, the primary category under which their Retirement application came under (Mental Health, Cardiovascular, Musculoskeletal etc) The average age of applicant Breakdown by gender A breakdown of Job Banding (if held)

Date range: 1/1/2013 to 31/12/2022

Your request was received on 30 January 2024 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

On 14 February 2024 you clarified the following: Concurrent Posts If a member has a concurrent post at a different trust/EA, should they be included in the data, or is your request just for those members with employment solely with this employer?

Yes Regarding Ill Health Retirement Applications (AWE33C), do you mean AW33E applications – ill health retirement from active employment? Or are you also interested in deferred members – AW240 applications? Please note that there is not tiered retirement associated with AW240 applications, and we may not know if this trust was their last place of employment, only that it was their last place of pensionable employment. Only AWE33C applications Job Banding Can you please clarify what you mean by this? Do you mean job title, or something else? Please note that NHS Pensions does not capture job title information centrally, as it is not relevant to the processing of a member’s pension. This means we could not easily provide figures on this. However, with manual interrogation of the information submitted with a member’s Ill Health Retirement we may hold this as often a Job Description is submitted as supporting evidence. We may be able to easily provide information on which capacity codes the colleagues were registered in at the time retirement. Please confirm if this would be something you are interested in.

No I do not think that this is data that is useful for me. Please ignore any previous requests for Job Banding details. Average Age Please can you confirm if the average age should be based on Date of Application or Date of Retirement? Please note that it is possible for a member to be claiming ill health benefits from multiple schemes, which may be assessed at different tiers. Do you wish for us to include those members in the data, should that be the case?

Either of those age data requests is fine however I would prefer data on the age at "Date of Retirement". I do not wish to include those claiming from multiple schemes.

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

We are unable to identify unsuccessful applications pre 01/04/2020 so have provided data from this point onwards only. For successful applications, the data has been provided from the full period.

However, in order to ascertain the “primary condition” we have had to request data from NHS Pensions’ medical providers, Medigold. Medigold has been NHS Pensions’ medical provider since 2017 and have provided the data they hold in relation to this request.

They do not hold information regarding the primary condition in relation to any ill health retirement applications finalised before 2017. These have been recorded in the attached table as “unknown”

In relation to the capacity code table: 4 - Others (non manual – APC) APC = Admin, Professional and Clerical 3 - Medical staff 5 - Others (manual – APC) APC = Admin, Professional and Clerical 7 - 07 - Others (manual - non APC) Non APC - Manual - e.g. kitchen staff, janitors etc - obsolete from 6.4.88

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01703