General Practitioners: Workplace Pensions
(asked on 19th April 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what key performance indicator targets have been set by NHS England and NHS Improvement for the administration of the NHS Pension Scheme by Primary Care Support England, delivered by Capita; what estimate his Department has made of the length of time a GP contacting PCSE with a query related to their pension administration waits for a reply; how many GP NHS Pension Scheme records, as administered by PCSE, are currently not up-to-date; and if he will make a statement.
The following table shows the performance and quality targets set by NHS England and NHS Improvement for the delivery of the pensions service.
Target | Description |
97% | General practitioner (GP) locum and solo pension contributions are validated and submitted to NHS Shared Business Services Wakefield within 25 working days after receipt of BACS/cheques. |
96% | All type one and type two pension certificates received are processed within 61 calendar days of receipt. |
99% | Requests for estimates application for retirement benefits are notified to the NHS Pensions Agency within three working days of receipt by Primary Care Support England (PCSE). |
100% | The NHS pensions compliance assurance statement submitted to the customer before the annual cut-off date. |
98% | All GP pension contribution payments data is submitted on time at least five working days before the payment due date. |
96% | All type one and two pension certificates processed in Pensions Online by Total Reward Statement cut-off date (measured three times a year). |
96% | All pension estimates are processed within 45 working days. |
The following table shows pension related quality measures:
Target | Description |
95.78% | All GP pension contribution payments data is submitted on time at least five working days before the payment due date. |
95.74% | All type one and two pension certificates processed in Pensions Online by Total Reward Statement cut-off date (measured three times a year). |
The PCSE pension service relates to work conducted for NHS England and NHS Improvement in a primary care setting. Last year, PCSE received 33,700 End of Year Certificates for 2019/20 and processed 91%, with the remaining 9% requiring further action due to missing or inaccurate information.
The processing of the 2020/21 certificates is underway in line with the normal annual process. Of the 2020/21 certificates, 20% were submitted using the new Pensions Online system, which ensures that submissions are more accurate and allows records to be updated more efficiently. While ‘offline’ options currently remain, these are less reliable with approximately 50% of certificates returned to the member for correction.
PCSE aim to respond to most types of GP pension queries within 10 working days, though some queries are currently taking longer to resolve given the increased volumes currently being experienced. No estimate has been made on the average response time.