Request

Can I please have a copy of your Internal policy and/or Operating Procedure and supporting Equality Impact Assessment (or whatever you might call the assessment, which would assess the application of a Policy or Procedure against impact towards a Protected Characteristic, as defined by the Equality Act) which details how and when a Tier 2 calculation is made following the recommendation of your independent medical examiner

Response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the following documents are attached:

• Ill Health -Ill Health Awards – Process Guide

• Ill Health – Payment of Ill Health Benefits Technical Guide

• Ill Health – Key differences 1995-2008 and 2015

The redactions that have been made to the documents are names of NHSBSA staff which the NHSBSA considers to be exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA (personal information).

Information is exempt under section 40(2) if disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles. In order for disclosure to comply with the lawfulness, fairness, and transparency principle, we either need the consent of the data subject(s) or there must be a legitimate interest in disclosure. In addition, the disclosure must be necessary to meet the legitimate interest and finally, the disclosure must not cause unwarranted harm.

As we do not have the consent of the data subject(s), the NHSBSA is therefore required to conduct a balancing exercise between the legitimate interest of the applicant in disclosure against the rights and freedoms of the data subject(s).

The NHSBSA acknowledges that you have a legitimate interest in disclosure of the information in order to provide the full picture of the requested data held by the NHSBSA; however, we have concluded that disclosure of the redacted names would cause unwarranted harm and therefore, section 40(2) is engaged. This is because there is a reasonable expectation that names of NHSBSA staff will not be disclosed.

Please see the following link to view the section 40 exemption in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40

The NHSBSA does not hold any supporting Equality Impact Assessment for these documents which are procedural and technical guides based on The National Health Service Pension Scheme Regulations. The Department of Health and Social Care would have been responsible for conducting any required impact assessments for the Regulations, however there are no impact assessments for these Regulations listed on www.legislation.gov.uk

The National Health Service Regulations are available from the following links:

The National Health Service Pension Scheme Regulations 1995 (Part E) - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/300/regulation/E2  

The National Health Service Pension Scheme Regulations 2008 (Chapter 3D)  - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2008/653/part/3/chapter/3.D/made

The National Health Service Pension Scheme Regulations 2015 (Part 5, Chapter 5)  - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/94/contents

The following link provides scheme regulations that may also assist in your request. 

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/information-about-nhs-pensions/nhs-pension-scheme-regulations 

The consolidated regulations are shown for the 1995, 2008 and 2015 schemes at the bottom of the webpage. 

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-02342

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.