If you’re eligible for redundancy, you have a few options on what to do with your pension benefits.
Some of these options can affect the benefits you receive, depending on your age. You can read more about this on our Capitalisation costs page.
Your options
Deferring your pension
This is when you take a redundancy payment from your employer but leave your pension in the NHS Pension Scheme until you retire.
When you’re ready to claim your pension, you need to apply to receive your benefits. You can read more about this on our Applying for your pension page.
Retiring with a reduced pension
This is when you’re made redundant and decide to claim your pension through early retirement, and take a redundancy payment from your employer.
If you do this, we’ll reduce your pension based on your age at retirement. You can read more about this on our Applying for your pension page.
Retiring with an unreduced pension
This is when you’re made redundant and claim your pension without any reduction for early payment.
You may be able to do this if your employment terms and conditions let you use part or all of your redundancy payment to cover the cost of paying your pension early. This is known as the capitalisation cost. You can read more about this on our Capitalisation costs page.
If you have 1995 Scheme membership
If you’re made redundant, you may be eligible to claim some of your pension at 50 years old if you:
- have membership in the 1995 Scheme
- started before 6 April 2006
You’ll need to defer your 2015 benefits. You can then claim these from 55, but they’ll be reduced for early payment if you claim them before the 2015 Scheme's normal pension age.
Claiming your pension between 50 and 55 can affect the benefits you receive. You can read more about this on our Capitalisation costs page.
If you have more than one NHS job
If you’re eligible for redundancy and have more than one NHS job, you can either:
claim your NHS Pension benefits from all your pensionable NHS jobs
claim your pension just from the post you’re leaving
If you have another job as a general medical, dental or ophthalmic practitioner, you can contact us or your employer for details about your options.
Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS)
MARS is a form of voluntary severance. It’s not redundancy, and it’s not linked to the NHS Pension Scheme.
It lets you, with your employer’s agreement, choose to leave your job voluntarily in return for a severance payment.
You can read more about MARS on the NHS Employers website.
If you accept MARS, you’ll voluntarily resign from your post. You may be able to apply for:
- actuarially reduced early retirement (ARER)
- age retirement
- consideration of entitlement to early payment of preserved benefits on the grounds of ill health
You can read more about these options on our Applying for your pension page.