One of the main reasons a group of sessional GPs founded the NASGP in 1997 was because GP locums were excluded from the NHS pension scheme. So after our hard-fought campaign, which also involved the BMA and Department of Health, although not perfect, locum GPs can now pension their NHS earnings just like everyone else in the NHS.
So it’s pretty galling then for many of us to realise that, in some areas, since Capita took over, much of the pension administration system in England, our pension cheques haven’t been cashed by the NHS pensions agency or, if we can see the money’s left our account, to no longer receive receipts of payment.
Thankfully it’s evident that the NHS Business Services Authority NHSBSA are on to this, and in their latest Pensions Newsletter, clarifies the situation regarding receipts:
“The GP locum’s Employing Authority (i.e. NHS England’s regional teams/delegated CCGs, or Local Health Board) or agents acting for the Employing Authority must provide the GP locum with a receipt upon request.”
So to help make everyone’s life easier, we’ve now added a pre-formatted pension receipt request to our automatically generated Locum B form within our invoicing system, populating it with your payment details so that all Capita have to do is stamp and sign it, and post to straight back to you. And once Capita work out that it’ll be even easier if they generate these receipts instead, we can remove that functionality.