NHS Pension MHO Status

Pat38493

Does anyone have any experience about the technicalities of NHS pensioners with MHO (Mental Health Officer) status? My wife is in this situation and we are kind of getting into a slight dispute with NHS pensions about here pension entitlement. They have sent an estimate for her retirement (in only a few days from now). Their calculations for her total length of service, her allowance of "doubled up years", her "pensionable pay" and her actual pension amount makes no sense to me. The pensionable pay number for example is completely wrong and doesn't even make sense in the context of the the other numbers on the page The actual amounts they have calculated are not that far off what she was expecting but they are a bit less. The biggest discrepancy seems to be that under MHO status, according to the myriad NHS documents I've read on the web, you can accrue up to 10 doubling up years before your 55th birthday, whereupon your doubling date resets to your birthday and you can accrue further doubling years for working full years after your 55th birthday. However, you cannot accrue more than 45 years in total. She is saying that there is no way she wouldn't have got the full doubling up allowance of 10 years by 55 as she originally started work on 01/01/1986. Doubling should have started on 01/09/2006 so she was in "doubling mode" for 16 years and would only need 10 years to qualify for full doubling pre age 55. There were some short period of 4/5 working but it wouldn't have been nearly enough to remove a full 6 years of entitlement. Therefore these is no way should would have had less than the full entitlement at age 55, and she is retiring just after her 56th Birthday, so she should then get 42 years - pretty simple. However according to NHS pensions is is 41 years and 123 days, accompanied by a bunch of other numbers none of which seem plausible to me. Does anyone else here have any experience in that area that might shed some light there?

Marcon

Pat38493 said:

Does anyone have any experience about the technicalities of NHS pensioners with MHO (Mental Health Officer) status? My wife is in this situation and we are kind of getting into a slight dispute with NHS pensions about here pension entitlement. They have sent an estimate for her retirement (in only a few days from now). Their calculations for her total length of service, her allowance of "doubled up years", her "pensionable pay" and her actual pension amount makes no sense to me. The pensionable pay number for example is completely wrong and doesn't even make sense in the context of the the other numbers on the page The actual amounts they have calculated are not that far off what she was expecting but they are a bit less. The biggest discrepancy seems to be that under MHO status, according to the myriad NHS documents I've read on the web, you can accrue up to 10 doubling up years before your 55th birthday, whereupon your doubling date resets to your birthday and you can accrue further doubling years for working full years after your 55th birthday. However, you cannot accrue more than 45 years in total. She is saying that there is no way she wouldn't have got the full doubling up allowance of 10 years by 55 as she originally started work on 01/01/1986. Doubling should have started on 01/09/2006 so she was in "doubling mode" for 16 years and would only need 10 years to qualify for full doubling pre age 55. There were some short period of 4/5 working but it wouldn't have been nearly enough to remove a full 6 years of entitlement. Therefore these is no way should would have had less than the full entitlement at age 55, and she is retiring just after her 56th Birthday, so she should then get 42 years - pretty simple. However according to NHS pensions is is 41 years and 123 days, accompanied by a bunch of other numbers none of which seem plausible to me. Does anyone else here have any experience in that area that might shed some light there?

The record keeping for such a complex scheme lays itself open to any number of errors. I suggest your wife asks for a full breakdown of three things in particular:

• the periods when she was working less than full time (how long/when/what the records show about her working hours
• the periods when doubling up applied
• how her final pensionable pay (not the same thing as pensionable pay, which is her pay at any given time. Final PP is used as the basis for her pension, ) has been calculated. 

Once she's got that, a lot of things might become rather clearer.

Pat38493

Marcon said:

Pat38493 said:

Does anyone have any experience about the technicalities of NHS pensioners with MHO (Mental Health Officer) status? My wife is in this situation and we are kind of getting into a slight dispute with NHS pensions about here pension entitlement. They have sent an estimate for her retirement (in only a few days from now). Their calculations for her total length of service, her allowance of "doubled up years", her "pensionable pay" and her actual pension amount makes no sense to me. The pensionable pay number for example is completely wrong and doesn't even make sense in the context of the the other numbers on the page The actual amounts they have calculated are not that far off what she was expecting but they are a bit less. The biggest discrepancy seems to be that under MHO status, according to the myriad NHS documents I've read on the web, you can accrue up to 10 doubling up years before your 55th birthday, whereupon your doubling date resets to your birthday and you can accrue further doubling years for working full years after your 55th birthday. However, you cannot accrue more than 45 years in total. She is saying that there is no way she wouldn't have got the full doubling up allowance of 10 years by 55 as she originally started work on 01/01/1986. Doubling should have started on 01/09/2006 so she was in "doubling mode" for 16 years and would only need 10 years to qualify for full doubling pre age 55. There were some short period of 4/5 working but it wouldn't have been nearly enough to remove a full 6 years of entitlement. Therefore these is no way should would have had less than the full entitlement at age 55, and she is retiring just after her 56th Birthday, so she should then get 42 years - pretty simple. However according to NHS pensions is is 41 years and 123 days, accompanied by a bunch of other numbers none of which seem plausible to me. Does anyone else here have any experience in that area that might shed some light there?

The record keeping for such a complex scheme lays itself open to any number of errors. I suggest your wife asks for a full breakdown of three things in particular:

• the periods when she was working less than full time (how long/when/what the records show about her working hours
• the periods when doubling up applied
• how her final pensionable pay (not the same thing as pensionable pay, which is her pay at any given time. Final PP is used as the basis for her pension, ) has been calculated. 

Once she's got that, a lot of things might become rather clearer.

Thanks yes we have put these questions to the NHS pensions - I guess they will take some weeks to respond.

The weird thing is that they report on their figures that my wife only has 14 years 49 days of doubled up service, which seems to imply that the only did 7 full years that they have classified as qualified for doubling.

I don't see how this can possibly be the case given her service record.  The only way they could possibly come to this conclusion is if they are only allowing doubling for the exact 10 continuous calendar years following the initial doubling date, but this is not mentioned as a rule in any of the documents that I've read.  Some of those years were part time 80% and 90%, but there were then at least 6 years after that but before she was 55 where she was working full time and these should also be doubled up to the 40 year limit as far as everything I've read.

Further, on her letter it says

"Your service has been restricted due to one of the following reasons:

*Qualifying membership must not exceed 40 years at (i) age 60 (55 for special classes), or (ii) 01/04/2008, whichever is earlier

*qualifying membership must not exceed 45 years overall.

The only one of these which could possibly apply is that it reached 40 years at age 55, but she then worked on for another year from 55 to 56 which should also be doubled according to the documents I downloaded from various NHS web sites.

Anyway I guess we will see what they come back with after some time.