NHS permanent injury benefits review 2007

Published: 12 March 2008

A decision by the Pensions Ombudsman in 2003 raised the possibility that some Injury Benefits Scheme Regulations had not been correctly applied over a number of years, leading to some injury benefit claimants having claims wrongly rejected. 

Following legal advice and a pilot investigation, the scheme administrators (NHSBSA Pensions Division) were given the go ahead by the Department of Health in 2006 to embark on a full review of the Injury Benefits Scheme administration.   

The Review, which went back to 1972, when the Scheme in its current form was started, subsequently found a number of instances where:

  • the wrong injury benefit payments had been made because the correct rules for offsetting a claimant’s social security payments were not applied;
  • applications for injury benefit that should have been accepted were rejected because the wrong eligibility criteria were used; and
  • decisions notified to injury benefit claimants were technically invalid because the correct signing off procedure was not followed.

Individuals whose cases were been affected by these mistakes were notified by the scheme administrators in October 2007 that their case was involved in the Review.  They were contacted again about  the outcome of their case by the end of November.  In some cases, the outcome of the Review meant that the status of claims and the payment of benefits under the Scheme were adjusted.  These adjustments were effected by the end of November.

A further outcome of the Review related to the administrative error around eligibility for injury benefit that led to applications being rejected that should have been accepted (i.e. the second category of cases listed above). 

While this has been reviewed for claims known to the scheme administrators, there were concerns that some people who suffered illness or injury during the period where the wrong eligibility test was applied may have been deterred from making a claim at all, in the belief that their claim would fail the test.  These cases will never have been made known to the scheme administrators and those involved may have missed out on an entitlement to injury benefit.

To address this, the scheme administrators launched, in January 2008, an advertising and publicity campaign to encourage anyone to come forward and apply for Permanent Injury Benefit who:

  • was in NHS employment between November 1985 and 31 March 1998 and
  • sustained an injury or disease attributable to their NHS employment and
  • has not previously made a claim

These claims will then be assessed for injury benefit eligibility and if successful, claimants will receive payments, including inflation proofing and interest backdated to the time their loss of earnings started.

Further details can be found at www.injurybenefitreview.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/index.htm

Materials

The following RCN materials are available for you to download:

RCN Leaflet: NHS Injury Benefits - Putting Things Right (March 2008) (Word, 64Kb)

RCN Leaflet: NHS Injury Benefits - Q&A (March 2008) (Word, 37Kb)