NHS Pension Advice

hyubh

Nelliegrace said:

It is terribly irritating to hear all of the false reports about how much NHS front line staff are said to be paid, and how much people think their pensions are because most people assume that everyone works full time, everyone manages to work until retirement age in spite of all the injuries and stress,  that all NHS Trusts pay extra for nights and weekends, and somehow everyone is promoted to a manager’s salary by year three. 

Provide a link to a single post on this MSE pensions forum that does that.

My mother’s nursing pension was just over £10 a year,

This has zero bearing on what a part time nurse accrues under any version of the NHS pension scheme for the past 30 years at the very least. Historically, as with pretty much all occupational pension schemes, the NHS scheme had eligibility requirements that were discriminatory against part timers - so if your mother's pension was very low (you don't give any dates - £10 in what year?), then my first thought would be that as a major cause. However, I'd be honest - given how things were 50 years ago, I'm a bit surprised she had any work pension. Things are very, very different today though - part time nurses enjoy excellent pension benefits.

When I was retired on health grounds I may have missed a few details about pensions between the chemo, the heart damage, and the spinal injury, and the nightmares, but if it was there it was well hidden.

You don't seem to appreciate that the ill health pension was itself a core benefit of the NHS pension scheme...? In the private sector, it is not the normal state of affairs that needing to retire on the grounds of ill health leads to an inflation proofed income for life being immediately payable by your now ex-employer. Even in private sector DB schemes, ill health retirement terms are typically less generous than those in public sector schemes.

And she didn’t get enough pension contributions in her own right because women got the sack when they married. 

Indeed, marriage bars in the mid-century. Thankfully, not something your own generation had to suffer.

My point is that the state pension may be less that you expect, even if you have the required number of years of contributions.

If you were expecting the state pension according to the rules from 20+ years ago, then you would be expecting the basic state pension only, from a lifetime of contracting out, not a figure that is half way into the additional state pension you would have accrued had you been in a job that didn't provide a good-quality occupational pension. In other words: your complaint here makes little sense. You want to have your cake and eat it...

kaMelo

Why is it the biggest whiners are also the same people with the least to whine about. They really are clueless as to how little they paid for such great benefits that comes with something like an NHS pension.

GrubbyGirl_2

kaMelo said:

Why is it the biggest whiners are also the same people with the least to whine about. They really are clueless as to how little they paid for such great benefits that comes with something like an NHS pension.

As an NHS pensioner I couldn't agree more.  If they took their pension contributions minus the extra National Insurance they would have paid they should see how much that would get them in a non NHS pension - I think they would be shocked

Flugelhorn

GrubbyGirl_2 said:

kaMelo said:

Why is it the biggest whiners are also the same people with the least to whine about. They really are clueless as to how little they paid for such great benefits that comes with something like an NHS pension.

As an NHS pensioner I couldn't agree more.  If they took their pension contributions minus the extra National Insurance they would have paid they should see how much that would get them in a non NHS pension - I think they would be shocked

at one point I was doing something like that - lots of self employed locum work and I had to send my pension contributions to NHSBSA every month as per the agreed percentage dependent on total annual income. Seemed a lot at the time but it was far less than I get every year now I have retired 

Nelliegrace

My State Pension started. I am a tax payer again. I might turn the heating up to 15°C to celebrate as it is -2°C outside.

saucer

Nelliegrace said:

My State Pension started. I am a tax payer again. I might turn the heating up to 15°C to celebrate as it is -2°C outside.

It sounds like you have had serious problems that have caused you to have to retire, for which I have a lot of sympathy. However the NHS pension is really very generous in comparison to nearly every other pension. Any changes really were publicised, just most people miss this kind of thing. Most of my intelligent and otherwise well informed NHS colleagues are quite clueless about the pension until they are nearly ready to retire. 

The information was always there on this, and how the state pension became more generous in some ways but different to the old one in terms of eligibility. You may have missed this well publicised info as well. You are in the right place now to get good information. Blast that heating up.

Andy_L

GrubbyGirl_2 said:

Nelliegrace said:

And those who never worked get more than those who slogged for over 50 years. 

What rubbish. 

Plus your NHS pension is better than any other pension none public sector people can get, you would not be able to get the same benefits from the contributions you made anywhere else.  If you work until your SPA you'd get the full pension, but you're not you're retiring 6 years earlier which you would not be able to do if you weren't contracted out to the NHS pension.  .  As an NHS pensioner I do get fed up of the "I was never told" argument.  You were told, you never bothered to read what you were given or sent and certainly never looked on the NHSBSA web site.  It must be terribly irritating for none NHS people to hear NHS people moaning about their paltry pension!

its quite irritating for NHS people who do understand their pension as well

Nelliegrace

It must be infuriating. I think we are bombarded with so much stuff we have to know, and prove we know, for work, as well as all the bumf, that we forget to look after ourselves, and our needs. I was arguing with a paramedic that I needed to stay and hand over my 40 patients, mothers and babies, verbally, though it was all written down, before being blue lighted to A&E.

I found the latest NHS Pension booklet in with my P60’s and notice of tax forms, signed and dated as read. I know I used it for the Blue Light Card information. I did not understand about the changes in the old and new state pension years, and I am not the only one confused where it says clearly 35 year on the GOV.UK information. Perhaps the necessary information was in the preparing for retirement sessions, but I didn’t get that far. The pension letter was a shock and started up the angina attacks again. 

At least it is sorted now. The explanations I found on the forum were useful. 

I was beginning to the think pension was generous only because so many of us are not expected to stay the distance and get the pension. The pay was poor for most of my nursing and midwifery career, because we were women, and because it was a vocation, and it was pin money. 

The sickness benefits sound so generous, but most of our sickness is caused by the job, the working environment, and patients and visitors. I have had dozens of work related injuries and a few nasty infections. When I trained, we women were the patient hoists. 

My huge mistake was having Superannuation payments out when I had a break in service. We were encouraged to do so, reminded frequently that we could, certainly not advised to leave it in. It was not allowed later. We all did, because we expected a sufficient state pension, and most of us were getting married starting families and going to live happily ever after. Money was tight. If only we could buy those years back!