Learn more about ill-health retirement
Further information can be found at Ill-Health Retirement
If you are affected by the 2015 Remedy and you or your employer applied for your ill-health retirement during the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, the application may need to be re-assessed. More information about what this means, and the required action is provided below.
The flowchart below and the ‘Am I affected ?’ tool will help you determine if you are likely to be affected, depending on your circumstances.
Remedy Ill-Health Retirement flowchart
Am I affected by the Remedy?
Not all members will be affected. If you are unsure if you are affected by the 2015 Remedy, the 'Am I Affected?' tool will help you establish if you are impacted.
Information for members who have had ill-health retirement applications between 1st April 2015 and 31st March 2022
In response to the McCloud judgment, we are reviewing cases to understand whether any ill-health retirement application under a member’s existing pension scheme, would have been eligible for ill-health benefits under their alternative pension scheme.
This review covers cases where members are eligible for the 2015 Remedy and had an application for ill-health retirement during the remedy period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, whether the application was successful or not.
In certain circumstances a new medical opinion may be required to determine what the outcome would have been under the alternative scheme’s criteria to ensure members can be offered all available options when it comes to their choice of remedy benefits.
However, not all ill-health retirement cases will require a new medical opinion, as the scheme manager can make informed working assumptions that the criteria would or would not been met or can correlate the level of any existing ill-health retirement award to an equivalent in the alternative pension scheme in certain circumstances.
Next Steps
Civil Service Pensions (CSP) have now identified cases where a new medical opinion is required and is taking steps to arrange for referrals to be made for a medical re-assessment of the initial application. If you are impacted, you will receive a letter asking that you give your consent for the re-assessment or you can choose not to participate. If you have already been awarded ill-health retirement, please don’t worry, your award will not be reversed because of any re-assessment.
If you decide that you do not want to be re-assessed or you do not respond to the letter, you will receive a reminder letter at a later stage to give you another opportunity to participate.
However, if you still do not respond or ultimately choose not to consent to a re-assessment, there will be a delay in providing you with any remedy choice of benefits and the alternative scheme benefits that we can offer you may be limited and calculated without reference to Ill-Health Retirement pension benefits.
The re-assessment will be based on your medical condition at the time of the original application and will be undertaken by the Scheme Medical Adviser (Occupational Health Service). The re-assessment will not require the Occupational Health Advisor to carry out a medical examination or a telephone assessment. Instead, they will review the existing medical evidence that was available when your application was originally assessed and determine if the outcome would have been any different under the other scheme’s criteria. No new more recent medical evidence can or will be considered.
Once the re-assessment is completed, we will again write out to the relevant members to advise the outcome and next steps. The process will take some time to complete as there are a substantial number of cases to process.