From 1 October 2023, members with 1995 Section benefits can take partial retirement. You can find more information on partial retirement, including a guide for employers on our Employer hub.
We’ve put steps in place to process partial retirement applications from members who are affected by these changes. These are members affected by the McCloud remedy who will have their pensionable service for the remedy period rolled back.
This may result in changes to some member records that you'll need to be aware of if you’re processing any applications to take retirement benefits or ill health retirement before 1 October 2023.
The McCloud remedy and rollback
There have been some changes to public service pension schemes. These changes are sometimes known as the ‘McCloud remedy’ or the ‘public services pension schemes remedy’. NHS Pensions members affected by the McCloud remedy will be given a choice of what type of pension benefits they’d like to receive for their membership between 1 April 2015 and 1 October 2023. This period is known as the remedy period.
Affected members will be asked if they’d like to receive legacy scheme pension benefits or reform scheme pension benefits for their membership during the remedy period.
Depending on when they retire, affected members will need to make this decision either when they claim their NHS pension benefits, or at a later time. More information on which members will be affected and when they’ll make their decision is available on our McCloud web hub.
From 1 October 2023, any pensionable service that members who were affected by the McCloud remedy between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 will be placed in the legacy scheme. In the NHS, this is the 1995/2008 Scheme. This is called rollback.
Partial retirement applications from members affected by McCloud
Members with 1995/2008 Section benefits may apply to take partial retirement before 1 October 2023. If they do this, and they’re affected by the McCloud remedy, we need to be able to calculate their partial retirement benefits based on their rolled back position.
To produce accurate estimates for these members, we’ve rolled back the pensionable service of some affected members early. This rollback took place between 1 August and 7 August 2023.
The rollback is only being applied to members who meet all of the following criteria. They must be:
- an active or deferred member (Status A, W or X)
- affected by the McCloud remedy
- a member with pensionable service on or after 1 April 2015
- a member with no protection or tapered transitional protection who were required to move to the 2015 Scheme before 31 March 2022
- aged 50 or greater if their legacy scheme is the 1995 Section or they’re aged 55 or greater if their legacy scheme is the 2008 Section
- a member with no award workflow currently in process
If the member is a practitioner, rollback is only being applied where all the above criteria are met and where they have any post without all 2021-22 year-end updates in.
If a member applies to take their pension benefits or applies for ill health retirement benefits
For some members, you’ll need to check before processing their application if their pensionable service for the remedy period has been rolled back so that we can undo the rollback.
You should email us at mccloudqueries@nhsbsa.nhs.uk to check, if a member:
- applies to retire before 1 October 2023
- needs to retire on ill health grounds before 1 October 2023 – so is not applying for partial retirement
Please explain in your email the type of application the member has made and the payable date requested.
If you are processing applications to retire on or after 1 October 2023, you do not need to email us.
To make sure figures are correct, we'll also undo the rollback if a member is taking their pension benefits before 1 October 2023 and they have an additional event such as:
- additional pension
- early retirement reduction buy out (ERRBO)
- annual allowance
- transfer in
- scheme pays
When we’re issuing estimates to affected members, we’re including communications to help them understand the impact of the McCloud rollback on the figures we’re providing to them.