Business Services Organisation
This newsletter is for all general practitioners (GPs) who are members of the HSC Pension Scheme. This communication will include all relevant updates and procedures regarding the administration of principal, salaried and locum GPs. Please read carefully and retain for future reference.
Principal and salaried GP’s should use gpcertificates@hscni.net mail box.
Locum GPs should use GPLocums@hscni.net mail box.
This newsletter contains information about:
- Payment on Account (POA) 2025/26
- Annual Certificate of Pensionable Profit 2023/24
- Self Assessment of Tiered Contributions
- Timeline for completion of various Pension related processed for Salaried GPs/Stand-Alone OOH GPs
- Email Queries
- Registering for Member Self-Service (MSS)
- Opting in and out of HSC Pension Scheme Membership
- Submission of Pension Applications—McCloud Ruling
- Immediate Choice Election for Pensioners—McCloud Ruling
- Dual Annual Benefit Statements/Remedial Service Statements—McCloud Ruling
- Contact Us
This newsletter is available in a downloadable/printable format here.
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Payment on Account (POA) 2025/26
The Payment on Account (POA) 2025/26 was recently sent to Practice Managers and Accountants. If you have not yet submitted your Payment on Account Form for 2025/26 please do so as soon as possible, the link to the form can be found here—
Payment-on-Account-2025-2026-and-HSCB-Funding-Control
In the event that we do not have a new submission for year 2025/26 we will continue to deduct the amount we deducted in March 2025. However, it is important that forms are submitted to ensure we deduct contributions as accurately as possible and eliminate large underpayments of contributions.
Any amendments to the Payment on Account throughout the year should be emailed to gpcertificates@hscni.net.
All queries regarding funding should be emailed to maria.coyle@hscni.net.
This would be the ideal time to make any changes to your seniority claim if necessary e.g. change in pensionable profit that will impact on your seniority entitlement. Practices should contact BSO on gms.claims@hscni.net and insert ‘Seniority Adjustment’ in the subject line.
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Annual Certificate of Pensionable Profit 2023/24
We are currently processing any 2023/24 Annual Certificates of Pensionable Profit which have been submitted.
The deadline for submitting the Annual Certificate of Pensionable Profit 2023/24 was 28th February 2025. At this date we had received X% of the certificates due.
The Northern Ireland average profit for seniority purposes is as follows:
0% – earnings below £33,182.48
60% – earnings above £33,182.49 below £66,364.97
100% – earnings above £66,364.97If you have not yet submitted your Annual Certificate of Pensionable Profit 2023/24 please do so as soon as possible. All returns should be sent to gpcertificates@hcni.net.
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Self Assessment of Tiered Contributions
A reminder for any Salaried GPs, OOH Stand-Alone GPs and Locum GPs that the 2024/25 Self- Assessment of Tiered Contributions Form will soon be available on our website for completion.
The team continue to work through the Self-Assessment Forms and will contact you when the reconciliation process has been completed.
The production of Annual Benefit Statements (ABS) and Annual Allowance (AA) data will then follow in due course.
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Timeline for completion of various Pension related processed for Salaried GPs/Stand-Alone OOH GPs
Practice managers should submit as soon as possible after 31st March 2025 the 2024/25 SR2 Form for any Salaried GPs in the Practice. We will complete the reconciliation and set any adjustments once SR2 Form has been processed.
The 2024/25 SR2 Form is available here:
We will receive information from Payroll Shared Services for Out of Hours Sessional and Salaried GPs Pensionable Pay information for year-end 31/03/2025 in due course.
All Assistant Practitioners should complete a Self-Assessment of Tiered Contributions Certificate for 2024/25. The certificate together with guidance notes will soon be available at-
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Email Queries
The GP Certificates Inbox (gpcertificates@hscni.net) receives a high volume of emails on a daily basis.
When contacting the practitioner section via email can you please include as much information as possible in your query so we can answer your query quickly and efficiently.
Please include part of your National Insurance number and date of birth so we can access your Pension Record and provide you with the required information. Failure to provide this information will result in HSC Pension Service contacting you for this information which will delay how quickly and effectively we can respond to your query.
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Registering for Member Self-Service (MSS)
Annual Allowance and Annual Benefit Statements are published on Member Self-Service so it is important that all GPs should now have registered for the Member Self-Service facility. If you have not registered please visit our website at https://mypension.hscni.net.
For assistance in registering for Member Self-Service please see: HSC Member Self Service.
The information provided to you on Member Self-Service is made available so that you may share it with any third party such as your accountant or financial advisor.
Please note that all requests from financial advisors regarding your benefits are now chargeable.
Our schedule of charges is available here: Schedule of Charges for Pension Benefit Estimates
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Opting in and out of HSC Pension Scheme Membership
Members can ‘opt out’ of HSC Pension Scheme membership at any time. Please remember GPs
must either pension all of their practitioner employments or none of their practitioner employments. Members must notify all of their employing authorities, not just HSC Pension Service. GPs can pension their practitioner employments but ‘opt out’ of officer employments or vice versa.
Form SD502 is available on our website here, members are reminded to read the Guidance Notes before deciding to ‘opt out’ of the HSC Pension Scheme. GPs opting out in year should utilise any overlap profits in that year’s annual certificate. We record the date of ‘opt out’ on the pension record.
If a member decides to ‘opt in’ again we require form SS14 Start of Pensionable Employment to be completed. This is the only way we can continue to update your pension record so that the accurate status of your scheme membership is recorded.
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Submission of Pension Applications—McCloud Ruling
As a result of the McCloud Remedy, HSC Pension Service must add an additional number of steps to the process of calculating and paying HSC Pension Benefits to Scheme members.
In accordance with the remedy, all affected retirees must be furnished with a Remedial Service Statement (RSS) which provides detailed information relating to benefit accrual during the remedy period, i.e. 01/04/2015 to 31/03/2022 or part thereof. This is commonly referred to as their McCloud Choice Statement.
Members have a statutory time limit of 3 months to return their choice on how they wish to claim the said benefits for the remedy period, after which, if no response is received they will be automatically awarded benefits from the legacy scheme for the remedy period.
It is therefore imperative, that as a result of these additional steps and statutory timeframes for members to make their choice, HSC Pension Service must increase the lead in time for the receipt of pension benefit applications to 6 months.
This will allow HSC Pension Service sufficient time to:
- Review the application for completeness
- Calculate pensionable pay figures for all relevant schemes including reformed and legacy
- Calculate up to 4 possible benefit forecasts for members to consider when making their choice
- Issue RSS to members electronic or home address
- Provide members with the statutory 3-month period to make and return their choice
- Monitor, document and record choice statement returns
- Calculate actual benefits based on the choice
- Put benefits into payment in accordance with SLA’s
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Immediate Choice Election for Pensioners—McCloud Ruling
Due to delays in our system capabilities and complexity of revision of Pensions, our choice for pensioners has been delayed. We do hope to start contacting pensioners with their choice information in the coming months.
HSCPS and our IT supplier Heywood continue to liaise on the process and development of a bulk calculation for the revision of pensions and agree a format of how the system will display and writeback the results in line with our Remedial Service Statements.
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Dual Annual Benefit Statements/Remedial Service Statements—McCloud Ruling
HSCPS and our IT supplier Heywood are currently developing a new dual annual benefit statement for McCloud affected members. This statement will show both estimated options available for the remedy period and will replace the old format.
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Contact Us
By Post:
GP Certificates
HSC Pension Service
Orchard House
40 Foyle Street
Derry
BT48 6ATVia e-mail: GPCertificates@hscni.net or GPlocums@hscni.net
Please do not send any returns to individual team members email accounts.
By Telephone: 028 7131 9111 option 3.
10.00 am to 12.00pm / 2.00 pm to 4.00pm – Monday to Thursday
10.00 am to 12.00pm – FridayFind us on Twitter – @hscpensions
Find us on Facebook – HSC Pension Service