Another Civil Service Ill-health retirement question

Hi, sorry to hear that I’ll health is beginning to affect your work, but hopefully you will find some answers or even just reassurance to the questions you might want to ask.

You are absolutely correct in stating that you are not going into this lightly as applying for ill health retirement is never an easy thing to consider with consequences for both successful and unsuccessful applications.

Being ill in itself is not enough. Most individuals who apply usually have (and this is important) an evidenced trail of short and long term sick periods, years of numerous referrals to OH, back to work plans, failed back to work plan instances, and exhaustion of all reasonable adjustments.

OH has a pivotal role at the start of the ill health retirement route as they have to agree that you likely meet the IHR criteria. They will base this opinion based on previous OH contact, information provided by your HR dept, failure of all reasonable adjustments, previous medical reports they might have and obviously how any condition or illness seems to be worsening.

If OH believes on the balance of things that you likely meet the criteria for IHR, they would inform both yourself and employer of this and the official process can be started…..without OH support your application will not be successful…..the IHR 1 form is you’re part and the IHR 2 form is to be filled in by the employer. It is beneficial to have a look at both of these forms, not just your one as it will give you a better understanding of what the employer has to evidence.

It is important to know that just because OH might consider that you likely meet IHR criteria, this in no way is a guarantee of a successful application.

My advice is to look at your specific pension providers policy and take notice of the IHR criteria you would have to meet to even stand a chance of being successful. The policy should give you enough detail to base a judgement on. Read this several times until you are confident that you really understand how they word things and the meaning behind the criteria. You will receive no leeway whatsoever with regards to the criteria.

You can certainly apply with multiple illnesses but would have to be able to evidence how these combined has affected your ability to work as per your contract. The pension providers chief medical Officer will likely only be looking at the most up to date medical reports, ie the last 12 months to be recent.

As for being off when you apply. You do not strictly need to be, but most employees would be as by being at work you are effectively telling the pension provider that you manage ( even if you struggle). From the pension providers point of view you cannot be fit enough to work (even if you struggle) and ill enough to apply for IHR. If you read the IHR criteria you will understand that these two scenarios are really incompatible. The criteria really is black and white with regards how you present.

If you haven’t already I would register on the civil service pension portal as this provides a fair amount of information that you may find useful.

I would definitely look at these…..I’ll health retirement guide for members and the IHR procedural guide for employers, IHR 1 and IHR2 forms……these can all be found on the portal or online search

Hope this helps a little.

my background is that I was successful in getting the Civil service IHR top tier award so my advice is from the point of having gone through this first hand.

Scott