FAQ: Is the ‘Unique Payment Reference (UPR) number’ (previously UIR) the same across all forms for a given month?

Yes, and LocumDeck handles this all automatically.

The process by which a GP locum needs to aggregate their Locum A and B forms together so that they all have the same Unique Payment Reference (UPR) number caused some confusion when this change was first released in May 2017. But after communications with the NHS pension Stakeholder engagement team, it has been clarified that the UPR is created when you are generating your Locum B form, ready to submit your pension payment, and you then retrospectively add this same UPR to all the Form As included with that Form Bs.

So, although the box for the UPR on Form A is in the section that usually needs to be completed before posting to the practice for them to complete Section 2, the UPR must in fact *not* be added here until the Form A form has been received back from the practice with your payment. It’s only then that you can confirm what month the payment was received in, and therefore, which month’s  Form B it will be included on. The UPR on the Form B and all its corresponding Form A uses the first three digits of that month as part of that UPR.

For example, if you receive a locum Form A and its associated payment in June, your UPR will be xxxxxxxxLocJun17 (xxxxxxxx is your 8-digit SD pension reference number that begins SD).

The locum Form B that goes with this Form A, and all other Locum As relating to payments received in June, will also have the same xxxxxxxxLocJun17 UPR, and all must be received by NHSPS by the 7th July.

*If you have entered a UPR before sending it to the practice, and the practice has paid you in the same month as the three-character month reference that you gave in your UPR, then of course you will have entered the UPR correctly. If the UPR is wrong, NHSPS have confirmed to NASGP that you simply draw a line through the wrong UIR, write the correct UPR next to it, and then countersign it.

Since October 2022, UPR has become irrelevant on Form A and is being removed. It was clarified that UPR is no longer needed to link Form B to the included Form As because this connection is made when the PCSE administrator inputs the Form A data into the PCSE record system.