NHS Superannuation Scheme - Opt outs: FOI release

Information requested

1. The number of individuals who opted out of the NHS Superannuation Scheme in each of the financial years of 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23
2. A breakdown of NHS Superannuation Scheme opt-outs by the reason stated for their leaving the scheme, for each financial year
3. A breakdown of NHS Superannuation Scheme opt-outs by salary bands, for each financial year
4. A breakdown of NHS Superannuation Scheme opt-outs by age group, for each financial year.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information you have requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

We don't currently record on our system the reason(s) that a member has chosen to opt out of their scheme. To gather this data would require significant manual labour as each individual form would need to be reviewed. It is not mandatory for a member to submit their reason(s) for opt out so even if we carried out this exercise it's unlikely to be indicative of any trends.

Within our software system we don't currently have the ability to filter opt outs by salary band although we are able to provide the number of individuals who opted out of the NHS Superannuation Scheme in each of the financial years of 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23, broken down by age group. Please see this data in the table below.

Year Case Completed/Age Bracket	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
15-19	41	39	27	38	38
20-24	261	254	176	217	264
25-29	386	526	351	320	575
30-34	373	472	273	305	588
35-39	315	417	269	260	557
40-44	240	358	207	218	546
45-49	191	343	205	174	465
50-54	244	387	231	197	533
55-59	191	308	195	226	537
60-64	76	151	94	112	351
65-69	9	17	16	32	85
70-74	1	0	2	2	2
	2328	3272	2046	2101	4541

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.