Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

‘I am writing to request the following information from NHSBSA under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as at the latest available reference date:

Question 1

I would like to know the total number of practitioner members; please provide:

The number of unique General Practitioner members, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

The number of unique General Dental Practitioner members, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

Question 2

I would like to know about practitioners with missing years of pensions data, where missing refers to any missing updates due up to and including 31 March 2022. Please provide:

The number of unique General Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above

The proportion of General Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, overall and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

The number of unique General Dental Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

The proportion of General Dental Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, overall and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

Question 3

I would like to know about practitioners with missing years of pensions data, where missing refers to any missing updates due up to and including 31 March 2023. Please provide:

The number of unique General Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above

The proportion of General Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, overall and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

The number of unique General Dental Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

The proportion of General Dental Practitioner members with missing practitioner years of pensions data, overall and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

Question 4

I would like to know the total number of practitioner members in the scheme, with and without active Pensions Online (POL) records, further broken down by being active or deferred and being a General Practitioner or General Dental Practitioner. A desired table format for this response is provided below for clarity.’

[On 11 October 2024 you clarified your request as follows]

‘For Question 1, I would like to include all active and deferred members (i.e. all scheme members who have not yet received pension benefits/died). I understand that this would be the relevant denominator required to generate the proportions requested in Question 2 and 3 (i.e. for the specified unique members with missing pension data, what proportion of members that could be missing data do these represent?).

As per my original request, I have asked for the data for Question 1-4 (all questions), “as at the latest available reference date.” If that is date the original request was received or that this clarification is received, then this is acceptable. I would appreciate if the final response confirms the specific reference date applied.’

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 30 September 2024, with clarification received on 11 October 2024.

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 is attached.

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

As requested, both active and deferred practitioners have been included. It is worth noting that a deferred member must have their pension employment record fully updated and closed prior to becoming deferred. They also may not have been contributing to the scheme in the year in question. This skews the data because usually members without pensionable service in the year would not be considered ‘updated’ or ‘non-updated’ as the presence of a contribution update is irrelevant.

A member could have a non-updated employment record, showing them as actively contributing to the NHS Pension Scheme but they might not be working in that NHS post.

The age brackets used are based on age as of 23 October 2024.

Members with concurrent updated and non-updated posts, are counted once in each year as non-updated.

For question 4, a member is considered to be on Pensions OnLine (POL), if they have one practitioner employer which uses POL. If not, they are grouped as ‘Non-POL’.

Question 1

Figures provided are correct as of 23 October 2024.

There are 33,077 General Dental Practitioners who are active or deferred members of the NHS Pension Scheme, broken down as follows:

26,022 are between 20 and 53 years old.

7,055 are 54 years old or older.

There are 52,175 General Practitioners who are active or deferred members of the NHS Pension Scheme, broken down as follows:

39,947 are between 20 and 53 years old.

12,228 are 54 years old or older.

Questions 2, 3 and 4

A copy of the data is attached.

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.

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.