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, which we expect to be stated in the response. Our expectation is that all parts of this reply would reflect NHSBSA records as of the latest available reference date, recognising that Q2 and Q3 will necessarily exclude members who commenced posts on or after 01 April 2022 and 2023 respectively, as they can’t be missing updates if they didn’t work in the relevant year.

1. We would like to know the total number of active practitioner members; please provide:

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

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

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

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

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

c) The cumulative number of missing years for GPs in question 2A, total and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above

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

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

f) The cumulative number of missing years for GDPs in question 2D, total and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above.

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

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

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

c) The cumulative number of missing years for GPs in question 3A, total and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above

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

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

f) The cumulative number of missing years for GDPs in question 3D, total and broken down by the age brackets of 20-53 years and 54 years and above

4. We would like to know the total number of practitioner active members in the scheme, with and without active Pensions Online (POL) records, further broken down by being a General Practitioner or General Dental Practitioner.

Response

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

Caveats

Only practitioners in posts that started before 1 April 2022 or 1 April 2023 and are active as of 27 January 2025 have been included.

Posts which commenced during the current financial year would not be due an update for the years in question, and are excluded from the data, despite being active practitioners

Only practitioner posts have been assessed for this request. Members may have concurrent officer service which may or may not have been updated and has not been considered or included in the provided answer.

Practitioner members are categorized into General Practitioners and General Dental Practitioners based on their employment types. For members with two open employments, one as a General Practitioner and the other as a General Dental Practitioner, they are considered separately for each employment type.

The age is calculated as of 27 January 2025 and is accordingly categorized into the appropriate age bracket.

A post not being fully updated may indicate that the information has not been submitted by the employer, or it could mean that the submission was unable to be processed onto the member record due to validation issues. Members with both updated and non-updated posts are counted as non-updated in each year.

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

Members flagged as non-updated have been included in the calculation of missing years of updates. The figures represent the total sum of all missing updates (for all the members) for the year end and the age bracket under consideration.

For question 4, a member is classified as being on Pensions Online (POL) if they have at least one practitioner employer that uses POL. Otherwise, they are grouped as 'non-POL'.

Only practitioners who were active as of 27 January 2025 AND were contributing to the pension scheme in the respective year, have been assessed. Practitioners who contributed in the respective years, but have since claimed their pension or become deferred are not assessed in any way, though would technically be considered updated.

Definitions:

Active Member – Member had an ongoing employment.

Practitioner – An employment marked as having an employment type 5 (Principal Practitioner), 6 (Assistant Practitioner) or 9 (GP Locum/ Locum Practitioner). A General Dental Practitioner (GDP) has the same employment type as a GP but has a capacity code of 08.

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: “NHS Pensions, NHSBSA Copyright 2025” 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.