What to do about pensions inaccuracies?

If you have concerns about the pensions data Capita / PCSE / NHS England hold for you, this page aims to outline what GP Survival would suggest you do based on our experience campaigning on this issue since September 2017.

  1. First, some reassurance: you do not need to worry about PCSE losing your contributions. All you need to do is make those contributions, and submit the relevant paperwork (ONCE!). Your pensions contributions are not part of a conventional pension pot – rather, they go back to the Treasury and are used to pay existing pensions (and, historically, to provide significant surpluses to the government – they continued to do so in 2017-2018 – item 3.4.2 net cash requirement).
  2. This means that even if Capita goes bust with your contributions held in the bank account of unallocated funds they’ve lost the details of, the government is still obliged to pay your pension based on your pensionable earnings.

How to check whether your pensions information is accurate

  1. The first thing to check is your Total Rewards Statement (TRS) – this is held by NHS pensions, and can be accessed online.
  2. If this data is correct, you don’t need to worry about what PCSE hold or do not hold on you, as this is the basis on which your pension will be paid.
  3. If your statement is blank, there are several possible explanations, the likeliest of which is that there are missing years in your record because PCSE haven’t updated them. However, your TRS will also be blank:
    • If you have gone through a divorce in which your pension was involved
    • If you have elected for a ‘scheme pay’ in response to annual allowance tax charges
  4. The next thing to do is to request a statement of contributions from the Pensions Agency, per their instructions here. This is usually 1-2 pages of A4 listing your contributions by employment per year. As in (2) above, if this is correct then you can be reassured your pension is accurate to-date even if your TRS record is blank.
  5. If, however, this is inccurate, you then need to have PCSE update their data. To support our campaign, please give us permission to submit a Subject Access Request to NHS England on your behalf using our google form. This will allow me to hold onto your SAR and submit it in bulk if and when necessary.
  6. You should then highlight missing contributions with PCSE and NHSE by e-mailing them.
  7. Do not resubmit any documentation, especially if NHSE request that you do so. The ICO have confirmed to GP Survival that NHS England should not be asking individual members to do this, and had given the ICO undertakings that they would not do so. Accordingly, if this happens please let GP Survival know.

GP Survival are working to finalise an ongoing process and the details of it with NHS England as of January 2019; in the interim there is further useful information: