What Will My Spouse Receive From My NHS Pension If I Die?

Q. I’m a Principal dentist aged 54 and have recently reduced my NHS Pensionable income from £100,000 pa to £30,000.

A colleague has told me that the lump sum paid on death is 2 x pensionable income, so I’m a little concerned that my wife would only receive £60,000, instead of £200,000.

Can you provide me with any guidance?

A. If you were working in a hospital and therefore known as an ‘officer’, a lump sum payment of twice your actual annual pensionable pay is payable directly to your widow in the event of your death whilst still contributing to the NHS pension scheme (this is what your colleague has advised you).

As you are a practitioner, the situation is different.

A lump sum payment of twice your average uprated earnings is payable directly to your widow in the event of your death whilst still contributing to the NHS pension scheme.

So, the easiest way to calculate it is to obtain an up to date pension statement from NHS Pensions. Once received, you’ll be able to see the ‘total pensionable pay’ figure.

You then divide this figure by the number of years in the scheme – you can find this on the ‘Practitioner Dynamisation Sheet’, which is on the pension statement.

So, for example, if you have £3,000,000 average uprated earnings with 30 years service, the lump sum payable would be £100,000 x 2 = £200,000.