The McCloud Remedy and Your Pension Statements
Written and reviewed by the Medical Accountants editorial team. Last reviewed .
The McCloud remedy is the correction of age discrimination in the way public service pension schemes moved members onto new terms. For the NHS scheme it covers service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, and for a large number of doctors it changes annual allowance figures that were already reported and already taxed.
It has been running for years and it is not finished. What follows is where it stood in July 2026 rather than where it was meant to be by now.
What the Remedy Actually Did
Members who had no protection or tapered protection had their remedy period service put back into the 1995 or 2008 scheme on 1 October 2023. That is what rollback means. Everyone then gets a choice between legacy scheme benefits and 2015 scheme benefits for the remedy period, made once, on the basis of a remediable service statement.
Separately, from 1 April 2022 every active member has been building benefits in the 2015 scheme regardless. Rollback changed the past. It did not change what is happening now.
Rollback and the Statement That Follows It
Because rollback changes which scheme your service sat in, it changes your pension input amounts, and therefore your annual allowance position, for every year in the remedy period. A remediable pension savings statement is the document giving those revised figures for both schemes across every affected year. HMRC explains what to do with one in its guidance on changes to your annual allowance following the remedy.
Once it arrives, the figures go through HMRC's public service pension adjustment service. That is how an overpayment gets refunded or an underpayment settled. Without the statement there is nothing to put in.
Where the Backlog Stands in July 2026
In a written ministerial statement on 21 May 2026 the position reported to Parliament was that 122,036 remediable pension savings statements had been issued and 19,694 members were still waiting, with completion for active and deferred members forecast for the end of March 2027. NHS Business Services Authority set out its response in its statement following that announcement.
These statements were originally due by October 2024. If you are still waiting, you are not an outlier and there is nothing wrong with your record. There is also a self-identify route for members who paid an annual allowance charge directly to HMRC during the remedy period, did not use Scheme Pays, and have had no statement.
Deadlines That Are Still Open
The reporting deadline of 31 January 2025 has gone for most members. The one still live is 31 January 2027, which applies to members who were already pensioners before 1 October 2023 and to personal representatives of members who died before that date.
Deadlines for reclaiming overpaid tax run further out, to 31 January 2029 and 31 January 2031 depending on which group you fall into. Remedy related Scheme Pays elections have their own dates, with 6 July 2027 the one still open for members who were pensioners on 1 October 2023.
Checking a Statement Before Acting On It
A remediable pension savings statement should not be treated as automatically right. The Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants surveyed its members in 2024 and found that almost 90% of those responding had identified errors in the statements they had seen, which led it to estimate that up to half of statements could contain incorrect data.
The usual problems are overstated growth and disagreement with HMRC records about charges the scheme had already settled. Check it against your own figures before submitting anything based on it, and against the certified earnings behind it if you are a GP, which is another reason the annual certificate matters. If the revised numbers change what you owe, that flows through to the annual allowance calculation as well.