GP locum pension guide: the essentials before you submit anything

Eligible freelance GP locum work can build NHS Pension Scheme membership, but the contribution process differs from an ordinary payroll deduction. For the usual practice-locum route, you are responsible for progressing the forms and paying the required employee and employer contributions. In England, this is normally handled through PCSE Online using Locum A and Locum B.

Locum A records the work for the relevant commissioning practice and requires practice approval. Locum B brings the relevant work together for the monthly contribution step. PCSE says its online workflow calculates the contribution after the A and B forms are submitted and supports card payment through GOV.UK Pay.

The scheme rules, contribution tiers and annual forms change over time. Your record-keeping system should therefore preserve facts—who, when, what work and what fee—without pretending to make the eligibility decision for you.

A booking in a GP diary is not enough to establish pensionability. Current NHSBSA Locum A guidance describes specific freelance, self-employed work and excludes or redirects some categories. For example, it directs out-of-hours or ICB work to the provider’s SOLO process rather than Locum A, and says income traded through a limited company cannot be declared on Locum A.

Other facts can matter: whether you were deputising or working temporarily, who commissioned the work, whether you are a provider in the same practice, and the capacity in which you were paid. This is why the safest question is ‘which official pension route applies to this engagement?’ rather than ‘was I acting as a locum?’

Mark uncertain work for review. Do not silently include it in a pensionable total and do not silently discard it. Ask the provider, check current NHSBSA/PCSE guidance, and consult an accountant or pension adviser where the contractual or business structure is unclear.

This cluster is written for locums in England, where Primary Care Support England administers the online Locum A/B route. NHSBSA forms contain separate notes for Wales, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own administrative bodies and processes. Do not use a PCSE Online checklist as if it were a UK-wide submission instruction.

If you work across borders, tag the nation and commissioning organisation at session level. A month containing sessions in England and Wales may need separate workflows even if the work looks identical in your calendar. Use the official guidance for the nation where the work was commissioned.

Forms are monthly or invoice-related, but the evidence starts with individual work dates. A practice may approve a Locum A covering several days on one invoice. If one date, fee or organisation is wrong, you need to return to the component sessions rather than guessing how the total was built.

A good session record stores date, times, practice, fee, invoice and intended pension route. Later, add the A submission and approval status, B submission, payment amount/date and official reference. This creates a trace from diary to invoice to pension record. It also lets you isolate non-pensionable work rather than deducting an unexplained number from a monthly total.

You work one eligible session at Riverside Practice on 8 June as an individual freelance locum. You told the practice before the session that you intended to pension eligible income. Record the date, practice identity, basic fee, invoice number and intended A/B route. When you submit Locum A in PCSE Online, record that date; when Riverside approves it, update the status. Then include it in the relevant Locum B/payment workflow.

The important point is sequence. ‘Pensionable’ is not a finished status. Your tracking should distinguish planned, A submitted, awaiting practice approval, B submitted and paid, so a single unfinished step cannot disappear.

You work four dates for Hill Medical Centre and send one invoice for the month. Keep four session rows linked to the same invoice. NHSBSA guidance allows multiple individual sessions or days on the relevant Locum A arrangement when one fee or invoice covers them, but the individual dates still matter.

Before PCSE entry, reconcile the sum of those sessions to the basic fee on the invoice and separate anything that should not form part of pensionable pay. If the practice queries one date, you can answer from the diary instead of reopening four booking emails.

In one week you complete two eligible practice sessions, one private medical shift and one out-of-hours engagement whose provider uses GP SOLO. Keep all four in the work diary, but classify their pension routes separately. Only the eligible practice sessions should enter the usual A/B workflow; private work is not NHS pensionable, and the OOH provider should confirm the SOLO handling.

This separation is also important for contribution and tax records. A total called ‘week’s earnings’ cannot tell you which part was assessed at 90% for freelance locum pensionable income or which provider was responsible for a different pension process.

Choose a fixed date early in each month. Filter the previous month’s work into A/B, SOLO, non-pensionable and needs-review groups. Match the A/B sessions to invoices and practice names, then submit through PCSE Online. Monitor practice approvals weekly, complete Locum B and payment once ready, and preserve dates and references.

PCSE’s 10-week rule makes this cadence more than tidy administration. A period ending more than 10 weeks ago cannot be pensioned under the rule. A monthly review gives you time to resolve access, approval and classification problems before they become irreversible.

airGP links session, organisation, invoice, pension status and PCSE logged-date records. That makes it useful for identifying missing actions and reconstructing a monthly total. It is the working ledger beside PCSE, not the official pension record.

For this beginner workflow, airGP is only the independent admin ledger. It is not connected to PCSE, NHSBSA or NHS England, and it is neither your accountant nor a pension adviser. It will not determine eligibility, prepare the forms, obtain an approval, send a submission or make the payment. Use current official instructions and individual advice where appropriate.