Request

1. Total number of retirement requests in the last month.

2. Number of staff dealing with the retirement requests in the last month.

3. System used to deal with retirement requests fairly and indiscriminatory.

4. Your legal obligation to keep applicant up to date with progress to meet deadline specified in the application.

5. Your governing body name to raise problems so process of retirement improves.”

Response

Question 1 and 2

A copy of the information is attached.

Question 3

Following your clarification this has two separate questions and answers:

What is your administration processes and procedures to deal with an application from beginner to the end?

The team follow specific guides and processes to calculate and pay awards.

When an application is received, either from a member or via an employer, it is registered in Operations Manager and given a target date depending on the date of retirement. Work is then allocated to the relevant team to work on in target date order. Depending on the complexities of the case it may go straight through the Pensions Operating system or may require manual intervention and will go to a separate team to complete the manual calculations and input into the Pensions Operating System to process and pay the award. If information is missing which prevents the team from processing the award, then further clarification and updates may be required from an Employer or member and will be requested. Upon return of this information the award will be processed.

Note: The work management system is Verint’s Operations Manager product.

Please note that we are unable to provide information relating to specific cases, and in addition this would involve creating new information, FOI allows access to recorded information, rather than generating new information such as explanations.

Who has established the way you work so can complain further?

We establish our own procedures under delegated authority from DHSC Link to Directions:

Section_2_-_B1_NHSBSA_Directions_2016.pdf

1. Your legal obligation to keep applicant up to date with progress to meet deadline specified in the application

There is no legal requirement for us to keep members up to date in the application process. However, we are exploring ways of how to keep customers informed in the future.

1. Your governing body name to raise problems so process of retirement improves.

We are commissioned by DHSC to deliver NHS Pensions Administration.

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-26586

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing, the data please contact nhsbsa.foirequests@nhs.net ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact nhsbsa.communicationsteam@nhs.net. 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 2022”” 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.