FOI/202600522556 · FOI · not held
Scottish Public Pensions Agency - Police Pension Scheme payment queries: FOI release
Information requested
1. The average length of time in days between the date a police officer retires (last day of work) and the day they receive their first monthly pension payment during the 2 year period between January 2024 and December 2025?
2. The shortest length of time in days between the date a police officer retires (last day of work) and the day they receive their first monthly pension payment during the 2 year period between January 2024 and December 2025?
3. The longest length of time in days between the date a police officer retires (last day of work) and the day they receive their first monthly pension payment during the 2 year period between January 2024 and December 2025?
Response
SPPA does not hold validated management information showing the period between a police officer's last day of work and receipt of their first pension payment.
To establish the information requested, SPPA would be required to undertake a manual review of individual pension records and verify retirement and initial pay date information on a case-by-case basis before matching this against payment records. Given the number of police pension cases involved during the period specified, SPPA estimates that the cost of locating, retrieving, verifying and extracting the information would exceed the upper cost limit of £600 prescribed under the Freedom of Information (Fees for Required Disclosure) (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Therefore, SPPA is not obliged to comply with your request and is applying section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) (Excessive Cost of Compliance).
In accordance with section 15 of FOISA, SPPA has considered whether it can provide advice and assistance. While we are unable to provide the specific information requested, we can provide related information regarding pension processing performance.
SPPA takes a monthly snapshot of all pension applications for which all requisite information has been received, enabling the pension to be processed and put into payment. The snapshot records the number of cases processed and unprocessed within the relevant month. The relevant month is defined as the month of the member's retirement.
Between January 2024 and December 2025, there were 1,266 police pension applications for which all requisite information had been provided to allow processing. Of these:
1,261 applications were processed and put into payment within the relevant month; and 5 applications were not processed through the standard process within the relevant month. However, in each of these cases, an immediate CHAPS payment was arranged to ensure that the member received their pension payment within that same month
As a result, SPPA achieved 100% on-time payment of police pension benefits where all requisite information had been received to allow the pension to be processed. For performance reporting purposes, a payment is treated as having been made on time where payment is issued within the same calendar month as the member's retirement.
SPPA does not currently produce management information identifying the number of pension cases where all requisite information was received by a specified date. However, work is planned to explore reporting enhancements in this area to provide improved management information in the future.
About FOI
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Contact Please quote the FOI reference Central Correspondence Unit Email: contactus@gov.scot Phone: 0300 244 4000 The Scottish Government St Andrew's House Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG
Detected exemption language
Therefore, SPPA is not obliged to comply with your request and is applying section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) (Excessive Cost of Compliance). In accordance with section 15 of FOISA, SPPA has considered whether it can provide advice and assistance.
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