NHS Pension

atush

Lukas239 wrote: »

Well crikey, you lot don't mess about. Very much appreciate your input and honesty.

Have set the ball rolling and asked to be enrolled. Can't get it backdated obviously but better late than never.

Just to claw back a tiny bit of dignity, it wasn't my choice not to be enrolled, was originally told I didn't qualify which was clearly wrong.

If you were told this, you have a complaint and may get redress as it is illegal. Consult pensionwise

atush

hugheskevi wrote: »

That sounds like a potential breach of automatic enrolment requirements (assuming your employer had reached their staging date, which seems likely).

You could try querying that point with your employer, asking to be admitted to the scheme from date of joining.

Completely agree

swindiff

I had the same thing happen to me when I started my employment way back in 1989 when I was a naive 18 year old. Was told I was not eligible to join the pension scheme (at the time LGPS) because I was on a short term contract. 31 years later and now in the USS still with the same employer. But I did not enroll onto my pension scheme until I was 25 because of this duff information. Tried making complaints about it and got nowhere. I estimate this will cost me around £3500/year in retirement when my contributions back then would have been around £500/year. It does annoy me but I console myself with the fact that I still have a decent DB pension.

Andy_L

swindiff wrote: »

I had the same thing happen to me when I started my employment way back in 1989 when I was a naive 18 year old. Was told I was not eligible to join the pension scheme (at the time LGPS) because I was on a short term contract.

"back in the day" that may well have been true. The LGPS has had several changes since then and it was only in 2003 that Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act was passed to ensure that there is no discrimination between fixed-term workers and comparable permanent employees.

nigelbb

Lukas239 wrote: »

Well crikey, you lot don't mess about. Very much appreciate your input and honesty.

Have set the ball rolling and asked to be enrolled. Can't get it backdated obviously but better late than never.

Just to claw back a tiny bit of dignity, it wasn't my choice not to be enrolled, was originally told I didn't qualify which was clearly wrong.

Who told you this? You have to actively opt out of enrolment in the NHS pension so if you thought that you didn't qualify then there was no need to opt out. If you were misled then you need to press HR to backdate your enrolment.

The NHS pension is 1/54 of your salary index linked & paid after you retire. In simple terms if you earn £54K then you earn £1K of pension. Assuming you are retired for 25-30 years then it's about 50% of your current salary paid after retirement.

Brilley

There are only a couple of reasons I can think of for not opting in to the NHS pension.


1/ You are insane
2/ You are independently extremely wealthy and don't need any more money.....

GunJack

Brilley wrote: »

There are only a couple of reasons I can think of for not opting in to the NHS pension.


1/ You are insane
2/ You are independently extremely wealthy and don't need any more money.....

:rotfl:



...but yer not wrong

hugheskevi

There are only a couple of reasons I can think of for not opting in to the NHS pension.

1/ You are insane
2/ You are independently extremely wealthy and don't need any more money.....

A few more:

(a) You are certain you will leave within 2 years and not qualify for preservation of benefits

(b) You are a relatively young high earner (eg age 40-50), pay the highest tier of member contributions (14.5%) have exceeded the Lifetime Allowance, are subject to the tapered Annual Allowance and face a significant Annual Allowance charge each year, significantly reducing the value of pension. Given the high member contribution, it may be financially optimal to leave the scheme.

(c) You are a very young member with high interest debts. You are sure that you will not have a long career in the NHS, and hence not receive enhanced in-service revaluation of pension (CPI+1.5%), only straight CPI. The combination of being young and having many years of only CPI revaluation combined with a high-yielding alternative choice for additional funds may be enough to make it financially optimal to leave the scheme (though it would by no means be clear-cut, and would need to be considered on a case-by-case basis).

(d) Extreme financial hardship - if there are no other financial options, increasing take-home pay by 5.3% for a very low earner may be the only remaining option for providing food and heating.

zagubov

I accidentally underpaid my pension when I switched jobs, but my employers rectified the error later; it did mean that I had a to pay a little bit more for a few years but I got the deficit backdated.

Have a word with your union rep. sounds like you too have been through a pension enrolment mistake. If you can't pay for the missing year, find out if you can pay extra past added years.

I'm collecting that pension now I'm really glad I did.

yellow218

hugheskevi wrote: »

So if you stayed in the NHS until age, the pension you would build up over the next year - at a net cost to you of £3,534 after tax relief - would be worth £1,645 p/a in today's terms, paid every year from age 68. You would expect to receive that for about 20-25 years, so a total of about £32,900 to £41,125. After basic rate tax that is £26,320 to £32,900 in return for the cost of £3,534. Plus things like death-in-service protection, survivor benefits, ill-health protection and so on.

I’m really sorry if I’m being dense but this isn’t making sense to me. OP could pay in £3534 a year for the next 35 years but only receive £1645 a year in pension for hypothetically, a similar amount of time? £1645 a year doesn’t seem anywhere near enough to live off of for a year. Please help, I think I’m missing something?