Active members

Overview

An ill health retirement, under the LGPS gives a pension to employees or ex-employees who:

• satisfy the relevant criteria, and
• are permanently incapable of carrying out the duties of their role.

The guidance below relates to current active members in your employment, who’d like to apply for an ill health pension.

The LGPS regulations don’t require an active member to apply for benefits. It would usually be you as the employer, or a doctor consulted by the employer, that would start the process for an active employee. Once the process starts, it’s the employer who has the responsibility for reaching a decision on whether the employee is entitled to an ill health pension.

If an employee has:

• been away from work for a long time, or
• has suffered an injury that prevents them from working

then the employer should decide if the employment should be terminated.

The amount of ill health pension an employee gets depends on which tier is granted. Employers must get the opinion of an independent registered medical practitioner, that has been pre-approved by the Pension Fund before referring the member for assessment.

You can find an overview of the ill-health process for active members on our ill health resources page.

Detailed guidance

As a scheme employer you should familiarise yourself with making ill-health decisions and processing a referral to an independent doctor using our two Ill-health pension guidance notes. Appendix E of Guidance note 1 sets out all the documents available for the ill-health process and when they should be used.

• Qualifying period – a member must have at least two years’ LGPS membership or have transferred pension rights from another pension scheme (of any length) into the LGPS.
• Permanent incapacity – the employer must terminate the employment on the grounds that the employee’s ill-health or infirmity of mind or body makes them permanently incapable of doing the duties of their employment. ‘Permanently incapable’ means the member will, more likely than not, be incapable until their normal pension age (their State Pension age) at the earliest.
• Not immediately capable of undertaking any gainful employment. The member must not immediately be capable of undertaking any gainful employment. ‘Gainful employment’ means paid employment for not less than 30 hours in each week for a period of not less than 12 months.

If the member satisfies the above criteria, then they’ll qualify for an ill health pension. Also the test for permanent incapacity is based on the employee’s ability to undertake the duties of their current employment. If the employee has more than one contract of employment, separate opinions must be made for each post where ill health retirement is being considered. It’s possible for an employee in more than one post to satisfy for one, but not the other.

More information

You can find more information on our ill health resources page.

The LGPS also have some ill health bite size training modules on their regulations and guidance website.

You can also book a free ill health training webinar with us.