Scottish Public Pensions Agency scheme statistics: FOI release

Information requested

Information in relation to the number of people signed up to a Scottish Public Pensions Agency scheme, and those who have chosen to opt-out or withdraw.

Could you tell me, in each of the past five years, how many people have withdrawn or opted out from the following profession (broken down by year)?:

i) Teachers
ii) Police
iii) NHS
iv) fire service
v) local government

Response

Table 1 below shows the number of members for whom an opt-out process has been completed each year. Members may have opted in voluntarily or through auto enrolment and then opted out again, so may be counted in multiple years.

Table 2 below shows a unique count of members over the entire time frame, i.e without the duplicates included in the year-level breakdown.

In both tables, members are counted more than once if they hold membership in more than one scheme. Breakdowns are given using calendar years. 2024 data is the part year up to 25 August 2024.

TABLE 1

	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	TOTAL
Firefighters	75	77	66	45	45	17	325
NHS	2,194	1,942	1,551	3,306	2,995	1,703	13,691
Police	347	350	361	299	430	262	2,049
Teachers	825	404	223	383	376	233	2,444

TABLE 2

Firefighters	304
NHS	12,262
Police	1,897
Teachers	2,131

The Local Government Pension Scheme in Scotland is a funded pension scheme, managed by 11 regional fund managers and therefore we do not hold member information for this scheme.

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