McCloud Remedy Calculator

The McCloud remedy gives you a choice at retirement: your service from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 can pay out as 1995 or 2008 Section benefits, or as 2015 Scheme benefits. This costs both, at every retirement age from 55 to 68, and tells you the age at which the answer flips.

That flip is the point of the tool. Either option’s figure on its own tells you very little, because the whole comparison turns on when you stop — the legacy sections pay earlier and pay a lump sum, the 2015 Scheme accrues faster and pays for longer. Knowing that the answer changes at, say, 64 lets you plan around a date rather than guess at a scheme.

Your service before April 2015 and after March 2022 is not part of the choice and is not included here. For the rules, the timelines and the tax side that does need action now, read the McCloud remedy guide.

• Practitioner and officer service are treated differently, because they are. A GP’s legacy benefits are a percentage of dynamised career earnings — 1.4% in the 1995 Section, 1.87% in the 2008 Section — not a final salary calculation. Most general McCloud guidance is written for hospital staff and quietly assumes final salary, which for a GP is the wrong comparison. If your remedy period contains both officer and practitioner years, both are modelled, side by side, in the same year.
• Everything is in today’s money, and that is exact rather than approximate. Practitioner dynamisation and 2015 in-service revaluation are both CPI + 1.5%, so both are precisely +1.5% a year in real terms. Deferred revaluation is CPI, so precisely 0%. Working in real terms removes an inflation forecast from the model instead of burying one in it.
• The reduction factors are looked up, not estimated. They come from the Government Actuary’s Department tables published by NHSBSA, effective 30 June 2023, and they differ per scheme — which is most of the story. The 1995 Section reduces from a normal pension age of 60, the 2008 Section from 65, and the 2015 Scheme from your State Pension age. It also applies the ones people forget: the separate, much gentler reduction on the 1995 automatic lump sum, and the late retirement uplift for working past your normal pension age.
• The 1995 Section pays no late retirement uplift. Work past 60 in that section and you get no enhancement at all — while the 2015 Scheme adds 4.1% for one year past its normal pension age and 13.4% for three. That asymmetry is why the crossover exists at all.
• Lump sums are handled properly. The 1995 Section’s automatic three times pension is included, and the maximum tax-free cash is worked out from HMRC’s 25%-of-capital-value limit against a 12:1 commutation rate — which is where the familiar “5.36 times pension” comes from, rather than being typed in as a number to be trusted.
• Ages you cannot actually retire at are blocked, not priced. The normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028, so whether an age is available depends on the date you reach it, not on you. The tool works that out from your birth month and says so rather than quoting a pension nobody could take.

A GP born in 1975, in the 1995 Section, with seven remedy-period years of £80,000 of practitioner earnings and no officer service. Their State Pension age — and so their 2015 Scheme normal pension age — is 67. Their 1995 Section normal pension age is 60.

Retiring at 60. Dynamised at 1.5% a year above inflation, those seven years come to £710,947 of career earnings. At 1.4% that is £9,953 a year plus an automatic lump sum of £29,860, and because 60 is the 1995 normal pension age there is no reduction at all. The 2015 Scheme accrues faster — 1/54 rather than 1.4% — but 60 is seven years before a normal pension age of 67, so its £13,166 is cut to 71.1% of itself: £9,361 a year, and no lump sum. The 1995 Section wins comfortably.

Retiring at 67. The 1995 figure has grown to £11,047 — more dynamisation, but no late retirement uplift, because the 1995 Section has none. The 2015 figure has grown to £14,612 and is now taken with no reduction at all. The 2015 Scheme is £3,565 a year ahead, against a lump sum advantage of £33,140 the other way.

The crossover is age 64. Retire before it and the legacy option is worth more; from it, the 2015 option is. Notice how much work the assumed life expectancy is doing: the legacy option front-loads value into a lump sum and earlier payments, so a shorter life pushes the crossover later and a longer one pulls it earlier. Move that input and watch it shift — that sensitivity is information, not noise.

Arithmetic on the figures you enter, under the assumptions shown on screen. It never recommends an option, and it is not financial advice. What it leaves out:

• Your actual record. NHSBSA calculates the real choice from your Remediable Service Statement, on service data you cannot see and this tool cannot reconstruct. Treat this as a way to understand the shape of your decision and to sanity check an RSS when it arrives — not as a substitute for one.
• The annual allowance consequences. The two options produce different pension input amounts for those seven years, and for higher earners that can matter as much as the benefit difference. Rollback has already changed historic positions, which is what the Remedial Pension Savings Statements are about. Work yours through with the annual allowance calculator.
• Partial retirement, ill health and death benefits. Drawing some benefits while continuing to work changes both the reduction and the service still accruing. Ill-health retirement follows different rules entirely. Survivor benefits differ between the sections and can be decisive for some families; none of that is modelled.
• Contracts sitting alongside your main benefits. Added years, additional pension, ERRBO agreements and pension debits from a divorce all have their own factor tables and are excluded. So is mental health officer service doubling.
• Contributions. The comparison is gross on both sides. The remedy-period contribution tiers were the same whichever section your service sat in, and NHSBSA settles any difference separately from the benefit choice.
• Scotland and Northern Ireland. SPPA and HSC run their own schemes with their own GAD factor tables. The tool still runs, using the England and Wales factors, and tells you it has done so.