NHS pension disappointment.

[Stillearninglife]

After 33 years in the NHS I have been battling with pensions as they “lost” years and years of my pension due to “clerical errors “.
Now I have a prediction which I intend on taking at 55.

Seemingly one of the best pensions around, reading of other people’s pensions, it is utterly crap.

33 years with a lump sum of less than £80k then monthly payments of less than £800 per month is so low. All those years at B7 diligently paying in thinking I will be ok financially and it’s just dire.

I left the NHS due to conditions and pay some time ago (2 years ago) so nothing is going into the pot, so I’m taking it at 55 next year.

Anyone had similar experience with NHS pension?

It’s not actually. I worked as a retail manager for only 12 years on a final salary pension . Granted I was on a decent salary and contributed the maximum myself but I took my lump sum of 80k and £600 per month at 55 . This doesn’t “ run out” btw - it’s for life !!
NHS pensions are supposed to be one of the best out there and this is for 33 years service ? Doesn’t sound right .

you will not have SCS if you have already left the NHS, you have to be employed by them at 55 to keep it. “Members who already held SC status before March 6, 1995, can retain it if they continue in qualifying employment and do not have a break in membership of five years or more”.

If you had a private pension it would be a fraction of what you're getting. Most companies pay in 5% on your behalf and it is vulnerable to stock market crises etc. The government paid in 29% on your behalf and it is largely protected, increasing by inflation too. You should look it all up and be grateful instead of moaning. Leave your pension where it is and get a part time job instead. It will be better for your mental health and your pittance of a pension will be worth more if you take it at later date.

Taking your pension at 55 will absolutely wreck the take home. £800 per month after £80,000 draw down is actually quite good. If you waited until you reached pension age, or even 60, you’d be much better off.

Hi op you will have been paid from the 1995 scheme only and the rest will come when your 65 from the 2015 pension as you can only claim that when 65.

There is a nhs pensions Facebook page too.

I work in local government and, when I moved jobs, for some unfathomable reason, my employers decided to try and pay me my pension at 57 (standard practice apparently for those 55 and over) and I too was shocked at how much they were proposing to pay me in retirement - £7k Pa, for 15 years of contributions. I thankfully stopped them retiring me, but I was informed there was a very steep discount to the pension being taken early - in my case, around 50%.

I am wondering if the same is true of the NHS pension scheme.

I have done 26 years continuous service over about 5 different Trusts. Whilst I'm not retiring yet I recently discovered that I had 2 missed jobs. Same as you, due to clerical errors. I'd paid into the pension but they just didn't have details of it on ESR. No idea how, because they had my original start date correct, but no record of my jobs, pay, workplaces etc for my first 2 jobs. I had to phone both hospitals - I'd left the first one 22 years ago and the second was shite so I didn't think I stood much chance. But they found me, advised pensions (who it seems hold the main records) who amended everything and it was sorted within a couple of days. If your predicted pension is so low because they've got blanks in your record then your Government Gateway income tax history thing online might contain different proof you need. Whilst it's easy to get angry about this please don't give up, there'll be a away of being able to prove those years. xx

You have paid in for 33 years - if you live till 88 it will pay out for 33 years - and being an NHS pension will it increase with inflation? Doesn't sound too bad with the large lump sum - but worth doing some sort of work if you can find something not too stressful?

Stop complaining. Any public sector pension is heaps better than anything the rest of us get in the private sector and we’re the ones paying for it.

The reason it’s low is that you are taking it 10+ years before the standard retirement age. At 55 you’re quite likely to live another 30 years and possibly longer. Contrast that with the maximum 35-40 years you’ve been working. Of course it’s not going to be that big.

If you want a bigger pension wait until retirement age until you take it. Then you’d have double the years in work vs. the expected years you’re drawing it, rather than the roughly 50:50 you’ve got now. Simple maths.

In terms of tracing what you're owed, might bank statements help to show the years you were working, even if this just highlights the clerical omissions by the NHS. I imagine the bank will have archives going back years.

As others have advised, it might help if you look up different pension types. Yours will be ‘defined benefit’. There is no pot. And the amount you get monthly will increase if you reduce your lump sum, or wait to take the pension at normal pension age. There should be a pension modeller kind of thing on the website where you can look at how changing the options you have impacts your monthly amount.

Your amount will be lower as you stopped working early and are looking to draw your pension early and have a large lump sum.

Admin errors may have had some impact but so will the factors above.

You could do a non NHS job for a few years till you get closer to pension age and then draw your NHS pension.

You are right to be upset

It looks like you haven’t be credited for all of the years you have worked

I think you have to do what @FarmGirl78 did and phone up the places you worked

Let me explain why and although I am going to make a lot of assumptions in the following calculations, in each case I am going to assume the worst.

So let’s say all of your pension entitlement is calculated with 2015 scheme rules ( the least generous) it would be calculated on (1/54) of your earnings for each of the years you have worked minus any actuarial reduction for early retirement. For retirement age 55 that actuarial reduction appears to be about 45%.

So if we go with 32 years (to account for periods of maternity leave) and assume average yearly earnings (adjusted for inflation to todays prices) of 40K then I’d expect you to be retiring on around 1000 per month age 55.

£40,000 x (1/54) x 32 x (1-45%) x (1/12) =£1,086.42

That is the worst case, in practice you built up benefits in 2 other schemes that were more generous and so you should be on a higher amount.

The reduction for early retirement would also be much lower if previous scheme rules were applied.

It is likely you are owed a lot more.

You may find this document helpful

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/Early%20Retirement%20factsheet-20210928-%28V5%29.pdf

Good luck

This isn’t true.

while a deferred member of the scheme you will receive revaluation from age 55 to retirement age so it will grow in that respect

Your pension at 55 will also have an early retirement factor applied so the annual amount at your normal retirement age will be higher if you choose to wait until then

as others have said it sounds like you can’t afford to retire at 55 which is young to retire

to put it this way my dad retired at 59 last year and he was in a relatively well paid job (much higher than a nurse salary) he wanted to retire at 55 as he was fed up with working but unfortunately he couldn’t afford to unfortunately that’s just the way it is

I have never wanted to scream “cancel the cheque” and “RTFT” more in my life. 😂

With the 1995 section there's no point waiting past 60. It doesn't increase after that, and when you do claim it (as a deferred member) you get the 'backpay' since age 60 in 1 taxable lump.

(If you leave it past 60 as an active member you don't get backpay at all, so that's an even worse idea.)

Sorry just seen you have special status where the early retirement factors don’t apply?

In that case £800 does seem very low for 33 years service.

Withdraw your NHS lump sum and put it into the private pension in your new job? Although there's a lot to be said for not putting all eggs into the same basket.

With a little bit of nous and a lot of time (which you will have soon!), you can outdo the NHS return meaningfully. You can take as much or as little risk as you want, with as much or as little money as you want. Your own, personalized, no fee pension - not just a part of a super-steady, zero risk, government pension. You've got quite a tidy sum there.

Pension age for the 2015 is state pension age, not 65 (so 67 for the OP, I think). And that will be tiny, as she left not long after the 2022 switchover.

let’s say all of your pension entitlement is calculated with 2015 scheme rules (the least generous)

No. The 2015 is the most generous accrual rate, at 1/54 (1.85%). The 2008 is 1/60 (1.67%) and the 1995 is 1/80 (1.25%). The advantage of the earlier schemes is the lower pension age, not the rate they build up.

Kindly you are misinformed and need to educate yourself.

You have a final salary pension which will have a pensionable age. Probably 60 but may have been increased. Your pension isn’t dependent on stock market growth. You have a very reliable gold plated pension paid by…..us taxpayers. Be grateful. If it’s low it will be because your salary was low. May have changed from final salary to average salary? Your pension is in addition based on the number of years worked. You stopped at least 10 years early- most final salary are based on 40 years to get 2/3rds. So there is drop 1. Drop 2 is you want to take it early. That means your pot has to last another 10-12 years (and as pension companies assume a lot of us will die early, possible 2x as long). That means your pot is reduced to match.

think 20 years £800/mth or 10 years £1600/nth. Not as simple as that but you get the gist.

you will have received pension forecasts didn’t you read them?

what is it with ‘wimmin’ being so ignorant with their personal finances? It’s not cool in the day and age. It’s 2025 not 1955.

Your pension is actually pretty good - it would cost around £300k in the private sector.

Do you need to take it , otherwise would be quite a difference if you held off to say 62. Could you take the lump sum but not the monthly income ?

You are not correct about you may as well take it now as its frozen. It doesn't bean that what you get now is what you would get at 60 or 67. It is deferred due to you no longer being in eligible employment and will increase each year only by inflation or a similar factor. However if you take it before your normal pension age, it pays out a lower income to adjust for having it for longer (calculated based on average life expectancy to pay out the same total it would have done if taking at full pension age). You probably have a combination of different amounts with different pension ages. Eg I'm a teacher with v similar scheme to you and one part is age 60, the other is 67. If I take mine at 55, one will be reduced by about 20% ( 5 years early) and the other by much more (as 12 years early). There is an automatic lump sum attached to one, which is 3 x pension income so if the income is adjusted, so is the lump sum. Ignore any whingers on here who haven't been a nurse for 33 years. Yr pension is effectively deferred salary, that's the deal.

Hi OP, your employer is legally required to annually inform you about your current projections for retirement income. If this latest statement is significantly different from previous ones you can easily prove a discrepancy. As a side note, it doesn’t help but you should take comfort that your pension contributions as an NHS employee would be considerably lower than you would be required to make in the private sector to receive the same pension income. It is a crazy generous DB scheme unwritten by taxpayers - you are very lucky and don’t seem to know it.

This!
OP you MUST be in a qualifying post and paying into the NHS pension scheme at 55 to retain SCS. I know this for definitive because I have checked and double checked for myself. I have SCS and am hanging on to go in 18 months at 55.