FOI-03859

Thank you for your request for information about the following: 

##Request 

<p><i>‘Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am writing to request statistical data regarding NHS staff members who have taken early retirement on medical grounds (Ill Health Retirement).</i></p>

<p><i>To ensure the request remains compliant with Section 40 (Personal Information) data privacy guidelines, I am requesting aggregated, anonymous figures. Please provide a breakdown of this data for each of the last five financial years (2021/22, 2022/33, 2023/24, 2024/25, and 2025/26).</i></p>

<p><i>Specifically, I would like to request the following information:</i></p>

<p><i>Total Volume: The total number of NHS Pension Scheme members who were successfully awarded Ill Health Retirement benefits in each financial year.</i></p>

<p><i>Tier Breakdown: Within those totals, a breakdown of how many members were awarded Tier 1 benefits versus how many were awarded Tier 2 benefits for each financial year.</i></p>

<p><i>Broad Diagnostic Category: A breakdown of these successful applications grouped by the primary diagnostic/medical category code used by the NHSBSA medical advisers (e.g., Mental and Behavioral Disorders, Musculoskeletal, etc.) for each financial year.</i></p>

<p><i>If any of the figures in the diagnostic categories are very low and risk triggering small-number suppression under Section 40, please apply standard suppression techniques (such as replacing the figure with "Fewer than 5" or <5) for those specific rows rather than withholding the entire dataset.’</i></p>

__[On 3 June 2026 you sent the following request]__

<p><i>‘Sorry, just in relation to this, could you please provide a breakdown of broad job categories for the data presenting - ie nursing and doctors or admin.’</i></p>

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 27 May 2026.  

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). 

##Our response 

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached. 

__Medigold__

Medigold are independent medical advisors used by the NHSBSA. They’re specially trained Occupational Health physicians. 

The role of the medical advisors is to assess an applicant’s capacity or incapacity for work against the tightly prescribed rules of the Scheme’s regulations. 

Occupational physicians are experts in seeking, evaluating and using the evidence of clinical specialists to assess the functional consequence of an applicant’s medical condition and how that change in function impacts on their capacity or incapacity for work. 

The Scheme's medical advisors carry out this assessment of the medical evidence and offer a recommendation to us. 

They can also commission further medical evidence if they consider it relevant and helpful to their assessment. 

Decisions on applications for ill health retirement are made by the Scheme’s medical advisors in the first instance and by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) on appeal under delegated authority from the Secretary of State. 

__Fewer than five__

Please be aware that I have decided not to release the exact number of awards, where the number is fewer than 5. This is because the claimants could be identified when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available. 

This information falls under the exemption in section 40 subsections 2 and 3A (a) of the Freedom of Information Act. 

This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as: 

a) It is not fair to disclose claimant personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. 

b) These details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the claimant. 

Please click the web link below to see the exemption in full:  Freedom of Information Act 2000 

__Breach of Confidentiality__

Please note that the identification of individuals is also a breach of the common law duty of confidence. An individual who has been identified could make a claim against the NHSBSA for the disclosure of the confidential information. 

The information requested is therefore being withheld as it falls under the exemption in section 41(1) ‘Information provided in confidence’ of the FOIA. 

Please click the below web link to see the exemption in full: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/41 

__Job categories__

We have considered this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and are issuing a refusal notice under section 17 of the FOIA.  

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA.  

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.   

Please see the following calculations which sets out the estimated cost for compliance with this request: 

There are roughly 14,000 cases that have been accepted/rejected in this time frame. As Medigold have never been asked to record job role for reporting we would need to locate each individual form, extract the manual text box into an excel spreadsheet and put it against the correct member in our outcome spreadsheet. 

We estimate this would take between 2 and 3 minutes per case. For ease we have recorded this as 2.5 minutes. 

2.5 minutes x 14,000 = 35,000 minutes (583 hours) 

There would then be manipulation into a data set and creating broad categories as they are not defined categories/job roles. We estimate this would take two hours giving a rough total of 585. 

Please see the following link to view the section 12 in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12 

__Data Queries__

Please contact <a href=mailto:foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk>foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a> ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data. 

__Reusing the data and copyright__

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact <a href=mailto:communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk>communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a>. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented. 

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: 

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/  

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2026”. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence. 

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.

Tags: Ill Health Retirement, NHS Pensions
Organization: Freedom of Information Disclosure Log