Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

I writing to request the following information from NHS BSA under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

The number of GP members that have missing practitioner years of pensions data, and those who do not, as of July 2024, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above The number of missing year data points, broken down into total members, total employments and cumulative missing years, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above The total number of members in the scheme, with and without active Pensions Online (POL) records.

I would like to request the information in a format suitable for online use. If some of the data is being withheld, please outline the reasons for refusal under section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please respond to this request within 20 working days after the date of receiving the request, which I believe to be 19 August.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 22 July 2024.

We asked you for clarification on 19 August 2024:

1. Do you want General Dental Practitioners (GDPs) grouped in with medical General Practitioners (GPs)?

2. Please could you clarify what you mean by ‘missing’? The majority of records will be ‘missing’ from the YE 2024 annual update, because it isn’t expected from Practitioners until mid-2025. At the moment we wouldn’t expect any Practitioner records to be updated beyond the 2022/23 financial year. Should we consider any open record not updated for 2022/23 to be ‘missing’ data?

a. It is important to note that the data may have been submitted, but just not processed on a record due to data validation issues. As member records need to be updated sequentially, we may have received data for later years which has been unable to be processed due to a missing prior year; this ALL shows as missing until it has been processed onto the record.

1. By “total number of members in the scheme, with and without active Pensions Online (POL) records”, please can you clarify how you are defining ‘member’? Is this to be read as “the total number of active members which are administered by employers with/without POL access”, or “the total number of all members (including deferred, pensioner etc), the majority of which will have worked for employers with POL access, but won’t currently have an active record”?

You responded on 22 August 2024 as follows:

1. Please can you provide information on GDPs and GPs, but listed separately.

2. I accept that the year end 2024 update isn’t expected until mid 2025 and so please do not include the current year in numbers, but please provide missing year data up to and including 2022/23.

a. I understand that one missing year can lead to subsequent years also being inaccurate. Can you please provide two lists, firstly the number of “actual missing years” where forms are missing and no pension data is available, and secondly a full list of all missing years i.e. including the subsequent years that are impacted too.

1. Please include all members, both active and deferred.

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

Our response

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

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

In the event of a member having both GP and GDP non-updated employments, they are counted separately in each category.

Members can have multiple non-updated posts, and each can be missing multiple updates; this is reflected in the attached table. Only updates due up to and including 31 March 2023 are considered a missing update.

It is important to note that the data may have been submitted by the employer, but the data has been unable to be processed to the record due to data validation issues.

As member records need to be updated sequentially, we may have received data for later years which has been unable to be processed due to a missing prior year; this ALL shows as missing until it has been processed onto the record.

It is not possible to identify which employments have had no updates submitted, and which have had updates submitted which have failed to process.

Pensions Online (POL) access is not granted at a member level, it is held at an employer level; a member may have concurrent posts with employers who have POL Access, and employers who do not have POL Access. In this case, they are considered as having ‘POL Access’.

For active members, only active (ongoing) employments are assessed for POL access. For deferred members, all employments they historically hold are assessed for POL access.

Primary Care Support England (PCSE) may hold updates for years which cannot be updated because of a previous missing year as updates have to be made to our system sequentially.

Publishing this response

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02102

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

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 2024” 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.