All GP and non-GP provider partners within a practice holding a GMS, PMS or APMS contract must submit a Type 1 Pension Certificate annually.
The Type 1 Pension certificate submission deadline is typically the 28th February each year. However, NHS Pensions confirmed the deadline date for submission this year would be extended to 31st March 2024 due to the complexities of the calculation of the correct splits of pensionable pay and tier rates as a result of the mid-year tier rate change on 1 October 2022. There is no penalty of late submission but best practice to aim to meet the deadline each year. The 2022/23 certificate will only be processed by PCSE if all previous years’ records are up to date.
All GPs should provide their specialist Medical Accountant with the pension contributions figures that they have paid towards their pension relating to the 2022/23 pension year. Please note that this is the GP’s own responsibility and cannot be undertaken by the practice manager.
In order to prepare your Type 1 certificate, your accountant will need to know the GP’s total employer, employee and AVC contribution figures for the year the certificate relates to.
To find out these figures, GPs should log in to their PCSE Portal page (username is typically your email address, usually the same one linked to your GMC account), select GP Pension and Payments, then select the GPP Pensions tab and click the Employee Contribution Statement option. From this page the GP will be able to see the pension contributions that they have made in respect of the 2022/23 pension year (or any given pension year). A screenshot, print-out or total figure should be taken and provided to your accountant if they are preparing your certificate.
What if you are a Salaried GP?
Salaried or Assistant and Solo GPs are required to complete a Type 2 Self-Assessment of Tiered Contributions for each pension year, so that NHS England can ensure that all NHS pension contributions have been correctly paid, by the member and their employers, and allocated correctly to the member's NHS Pension Scheme record. This is the only way that your pension record is updated so don't over-look this!
Completing the form involves entering your pensionable pay for the year and the employee and added years/AVC pension contributions that have been collected through the payroll. You should take this information from your payslips. It is essentially the gross pay on which pension contributions have been paid and will include your normal gross pay, including overtime, and any ad hoc income net of expenses. This is not to be confused with the taxable pay which would show on a P60.
The form also has to include any other Practitioner earnings e.g. pensioned GP locum work, GP SOLO work for Appraisals/out of hours, other salaried GP posts and type 1 earnings if you were also a GP partner during the year. Any periods of maternity leave also need to be considered as do the rules for annualising.
If you are unsure of what information needs to be input, you can contact our Client Services team to obtain a quote for our Type 2 certificate service.
The 2022/23 form will only be processed by PCSE if all previous years’ records are up to date. Certificates will only be processed by PCSE in sequential order - i.e., if 2021/22 has not yet been submitted, PCSE might not process 2022/23 and so on. You can therefore now check via the new PCSE Portal which years have been submitted – any that do not show are outstanding. PCSE may be showing some years as outstanding even when the forms were submitted correctly by the due date. This is because PCSE may not have correctly processed the forms or they have been lost or voided in their system.
To check if you have any years outstanding or unprocessed by PCSE, log-in to the PCSE Portal, select the GP Pensions tab, click the Annual Certificate option from the dashboard and look under the Financial Year section. You will see which years are missing or incomplete as these will be shown in red.
If your NHS Pension record is not up to date - our specialists can review your record for you and report any anomolies / gaps, providing guidance on how you can correct unless you wish our experts to take this forward for you.
