Final Seniority Figures for GMS GPs in England and Wales 2016-17

The analysis is based on superannuable income data for GMS Contractor GPs with a full accounting year. See Annex A for further information on the rules for inclusions and exclusions. This is the agreed methodology and has been used since the calculation of the 2004/05 Final Seniority Figures.

It is necessary to know a GP’s contract type and if they work in England or Wales since the FSF is calculated for GMS GPs only and is calculated separately for England and Wales. However, country markers and contract types are not part of the NHS pensions dataset. Therefore, these markers, which relate to the practice a GP works at, are taken from the NHS GP payments system, and matched to GPs appearing in the payments system for Wales GPs and in the workforce Minimum Data Set (wMDS) for England GPs. There are a number of GPs who do not appear in the payments system or in the wMDS, for whom it is not possible to ascertain whether they work in England or Wales or who have duplicate rows in the data with conflicting contract types. Table 1 below shows that the average superannuable income figures are very similar when these GPs are deleted from the dataset.

Table 1: Average superannuable income for FSF analysis, 2016/17, GPMS GPs

It is important to note the average superannuable income figure will include an unknown component representing the actual seniority payment made to individuals for that year.

However, by considering each GP’s date of birth, and assuming that each individual began to accrue Years of Reckonable Service from the age of 23 onwards, it is possible to estimate the seniority payment that was made to each individual in 2016/17 (periods of part-time and full-time working are treated the same). Hence, it is possible to estimate the average superannuable income figure excluding the seniority payment component. This figure is, by definition, the FSF that is required.

The average superannuable income figures have been calculated for 2016/17 and presented in Table 2 for England and Wales GMS Contractor GPs. Among GMS Contractor GPs in England, the average NHS superannuable income is £99,080 in 2016/17 and for Wales, the average NHS superannuable income is £91,742. The figures are based on a population of 9,789 GMS Contractor GPs in England and 1,256 contractor GPs in Wales.

By taking the same GP coverage and analysing their dates of birth and superannuable income in the manner described above, the average seniority payment for England is £4,331 and the average seniority payment for Wales is £4,025. The calculations behind the average seniority payment are shown in Annexes C and D for each country.

Table 2 shows the breakdown of the FSF calculations for England and Wales. It is important to note, however, that this is merely an estimate of what the average seniority payment was, rather than a precise calculation. In the absence of central recording of NHS superannuable pay before seniority payment, it is not possible to do more than estimate what the size of the seniority component was for any one individual GP in the sample.

Table 2: Breakdown of FSF calculations, England and Wales, GMS Contractor GPs, 2016/17

^{Note: Calculations are based on unrounded figures.}

By deducting the average seniority payment from average superannuable income, the FSF can be calculated for each country as shown in Table 2. The FSF for England is calculated as £94,749 and the FSF for Wales is calculated as £87,717.

Annex E shows a comparison of Interim Seniority Factors (ISFs) and FSFs from 2006/07. The FSFs for 2008/09 as calculated in this report are noticeably lower than the ISFs. TSC intended to calculate a high ISF for 2008/09. As was the expectation, there is not such a difference between the ISF and FSF in subsequent years.