It has been around five years since NHS pensions were hitting the national news, as headlines warned of concerns that doctors were having to retire early to avoid the risk of a large tax bill through the tapered annual allowance rules and hitting the lifetime allowance.

However, the government has come up with at least a temporary fix to that problem, with Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, confirming the abolition of the lifetime allowance in the 2023 Spring Budget, alongside an increase in the annual allowance from £40,000 to £60,000.

He explained at the time: "I have listened to the concerns of many senior NHS clinicians who say that unpredictable NHS charges are making them leave the NHS just when they are needed the most… I don’t want any doctor to retire early because of the way pension taxation works…

"It is a pension tax reform that will stop over 80 per cent of NHS doctors from receiving a tax charge, incentivise our most experienced and productive workers to stay in work for longer, and simplify our tax system, taking thousands of people out of the complexity."

So, now that hurdle has been overcome, there’s no more confusion for savers regarding NHS pensions right? Wrong.

According to specialist medical accountants, BW Medical Accounts, ‘how much NHS pension will I get after 20 years’ has 2,900 monthly Google searches.

Meanwhile, ‘how does the NHS pension work’ receives 480 monthly Google searches; the same amount as ‘can I cash my NHS pension in early’.

‘How much will my NHS pension increase this year’ and ‘how much does the NHS contribute to my pension’ are also popular searches, both with 390 a month.

“So, with uncertainty around the ability to commit to a monthly pension contribution, many NHS staff have questions about the NHS pension scheme and how exactly it works to benefit them in the long run,” BW Medical Accounts said.

The firm noted that 2022 saw 53,762 NHS staff opt out of the pension in order to add to their take-home pay, with 26,100 of the NHS staff opting out of the pension scheme citing affordability as their main reason for leaving, and over 27,600 claiming they had to prioritise other financial investments.

Meanwhile, data from NHS England showed that over a third of nurses who retired around two years ago returned to work within 12 months.

It seems the efforts to tackle the lifetime allowance problem that affected NHS pensions hasn’t taken away all confusion for its savers yet.

---