GP Superannuation Certificates
Written and reviewed by the Medical Accountants editorial team. Last reviewed .
Every year a GP has to tell the pension scheme what their pensionable earnings actually were. Not what was estimated at the start of the year, and not what the practice paid over: what the figure turned out to be once the accounts and the tax return were finished.
That is what the certificates do. There are two of them, the one you need depends on what kind of GP you were during the year, and it is entirely possible to need both.
Type 1 and Type 2, and Which You Are
A type 1 medical practitioner is a provider: a GP partner or a single-hander. Non-GP partners are in the same position. If that is you, you complete an annual certificate of pensionable profits.
A type 2 medical practitioner is a GP performer who is not a provider. In practice that means a salaried GP, and it extends to solo work and to pensioned locum work. If that is you, you complete a type 2 self assessment, usually called the end of year certificate. It is your responsibility rather than the practice manager's, which is the single most common misunderstanding on this subject.
The One Month Rule and the February Date
The statutory rule is not a fixed date. The regulations require the certificate within one month of the date the Self Assessment return was required to be submitted to HMRC, which is set out at Schedule 12 of the NHS Pension Scheme Regulations 2015. Since the return is due on 31 January, that lands at the end of February.
Certificates are also filed a year in arrears, which trips people up more than the date does. Primary Care Support England published the deadline for the 2024/25 pension year as 28 February 2026, and sets out both processes on its end of year processes pages. A GP thinking about this year is usually thinking about the wrong year.
What the Certificate Has to Include
All of it. A type 1 certificate covers locum and solo income as well as the partnership profit share, and a GP holding partner positions in more than one practice needs a separate certificate for each. A type 2 aggregates salaried, solo and pensioned locum income so the correct contribution tier can be worked out across the lot.
That aggregation is where money is usually lost or found. A GP paying at a tier based on one source of income, while earning from three, has been paying the wrong amount all year, and nobody finds out until the certificate goes in.
Changing Role Part Way Through a Year
A salaried GP who becomes a partner in October does not get to pick one certificate. Both are needed, each covering its own part of the year. The same applies in the other direction, and in the year a partner retires from the partnership but keeps doing sessions.
The split also has to agree with the practice accounts and with the profit allocation, which is why we deal with certificates and partnership accounts as one job rather than two.
Missed Certificates and a Frozen Benefit Statement
Nothing happens loudly. There is no penalty letter and no fine. What happens is that your annual benefit statement stops being updated, because it only updates where the relevant certificate has been submitted for every previous year. Years later, someone planning retirement finds a statement that stopped moving in 2019.
The second consequence is on tax. Until certified earnings are in, the scheme cannot calculate your pension growth, so your annual allowance position cannot be settled either. A missing certificate is not a filing chore. It is the thing holding up the number you need for your tax return.