LGPS ill health retirement can pay your pension straight away at any age. Your employer picks one of three tiers after an independent medical opinion.
If illness means you can no longer do your council or other local government job, the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) has its own route to an early pension, with rules that differ from ordinary LGPS retirement. Everything below describes England and Wales unless a heading says otherwise. Would a person to talk it through help? With nothing to pay, an FCA-authorised adviser rings you once you put your number into the short form on this page. Your employer's pensions team and your LGPS fund remain the free first stops for questions about your own record.
Who can take LGPS ill health retirement?
The LGPS member website says you "must have met the two year qualifying period" and that your employer must be satisfied of two things: you cannot permanently do your job through to Normal Pension Age, and you are not immediately capable of gainful employment. Normal Pension Age in the LGPS is linked to your State Pension age. The regulations (regulation 35 of the 2013 Regulations) put the same test in legal words: the member must be "permanently incapable of discharging efficiently the duties of the employment" and "not immediately capable of undertaking any gainful employment", because of ill-health or infirmity of mind or body.
Gainful employment has a specific meaning: "paid employment for at least 30 hours a week for a period of at least a year". Ill health benefits "can be paid at any age", and the pension is not reduced for early payment. The rise in the earliest pension age from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028 does not apply to ill health retirements, according to the same website.
So there are two questions: whether you can do your own job, and whether you could do other paid work. The answer to the second, and for how long, is what sets your tier.
What do LGPS ill health tiers 1, 2 and 3 pay?
Your employer decides the tier, using a medical opinion about how long you are unlikely to be capable of gainful employment. In all three, the pension you have already built up is paid without the early-payment reductions that apply to ordinary early retirement (see LGPS early retirement reductions). What differs is the extra pension added for the years you will not now work.
| Tier | You qualify if you are | What is paid |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | unlikely to be capable of gainful employment before Normal Pension Age | Your accrued pension, topped up with the pension the main section would have added between leaving and Normal Pension Age. Paid for life. |
| Tier 2 | unlikely to be capable of gainful employment within three years of leaving, but likely to be capable before Normal Pension Age | Your accrued pension, topped up with a quarter (25%) of that same missing pension. Paid for life. |
| Tier 3 | likely to be capable of gainful employment within three years of leaving, or before Normal Pension Age if that is earlier | Your accrued pension only, with no top-up. Paid temporarily. |
The extra pension in Tiers 1 and 2 is worked out from Assumed Pensionable Pay, which the member website describes as "the average pay you receive in the period before you leave due to ill health retirement": three months' pay if you are paid monthly, or 12 weeks' pay if not. Reductions in pay caused by sickness or injury are generally ignored, and if you had cut your hours because of the condition itself, an independent medical practitioner must certify that, and your employer then uses the pay you would have received on your old hours.
Because the result depends on your pay and on which years of membership you have, your fund's own estimate is the figure to rely on. The general build-up of an LGPS pension is in how an LGPS pension is calculated.
How do you apply, and who decides?
For someone still working, the decision belongs to the employer. Under regulation 36 it must first obtain a certificate from an independent registered medical practitioner (IRMP) saying whether the two conditions are met and how long you are unlikely to be capable of gainful employment. The IRMP "must not have previously advised, or given an opinion on, or otherwise been involved in" your case, and if your employer is not your fund's administering authority it needs that authority's approval of its choice of IRMP.
In practice, start with your employer's HR or pensions team, who run the process and will ask for medical evidence; the forms and timings are set locally. Wondering how a Tier 1 or Tier 2 award would sit beside other pensions you hold? That is a topic for an FCA-authorised adviser's call, and you can request one by completing the short form on this page.
If you have already left the LGPS
The member website says its ill health section does not apply if you have a deferred pension; a separate deferred route applies instead. Regulation 38 lets a deferred member who has become permanently incapable of doing their former job, and who is unlikely to be capable of gainful employment before Normal Pension Age or for at least three years (whichever is sooner), ask in writing for payment "whatever the member's age". Your former employer, or the administering authority if that employer has ceased to be a scheme employer, must get an IRMP certificate before deciding. For other deferred-pension points, see leaving the LGPS before retirement.
If you disagree with a refusal or the tier
The scheme's internal disputes resolution procedure has two stages, according to the member website. First, write to the adjudicator of the body that made the decision, within six months of being told of it (the adjudicator may allow longer). Second, if you are still dissatisfied, apply to your pension fund to reconsider. Your fund can say who the adjudicators are and may have a form. You must finish this procedure before a formal complaint to The Pensions Ombudsman, and MoneyHelper gives free help with pension questions along the way.
What happens when a Tier 3 pension is reviewed or stops?
Tier 3 is the only tier built to end. The member website says it stops at the first of three events: it has been paid for three years, you start gainful employment, or you become capable of gainful employment. Your former employer has to assess whether you are capable, and if you reach Normal Pension Age while it is being paid, it does not stop.
Regulation 37 adds detail. You must tell your former employer if you start any employment while Tier 3 is in payment and answer reasonable questions about pay and hours. The employer may treat a job as gainful if it reasonably expects it to last at least 12 months, whether or not it does, and may recover payments made for a period after that job began. It must review the award after 18 months, with a further IRMP certificate, and can continue Tier 3, award Tier 2 where the conditions in the regulation are met, or stop payment.
If payment stops you become a deferred member, and the pension you built up normally becomes payable again from Normal Pension Age, though you may take it earlier; your fund explains your options at that point. The regulations also allow the employer to award Tier 2 later, if you ask for a review while Tier 3 is being paid or within three years of it stopping, and a fresh IRMP certificate supports it.
Do Scottish and Northern Irish schemes use the same tiers?
No. Scotland's rules and NILGOSC's page each set out two tiers, with no temporary Tier 3. In Scotland the current rules are the Local Government Pension Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2018. Regulation 34 keeps the two-year qualifying period but sets a single condition: that ill health makes you permanently incapable of doing your own job efficiently. Tier 1 applies if you are unlikely to be capable of gainful employment before Normal Pension Age, and Tier 2 if you are likely to become capable of it before then; the Scottish member website gives the Tier 2 top-up as 25%, as in England and Wales.
Northern Ireland has its own scheme run by NILGOSC. It says it must be satisfied that you are permanently incapable of doing your own job and have a reduced likelihood of being capable of doing any other job before normal pension age, and that its decision rests on a report from its independent registered medical practitioner. Its Tier 1 enhancement is 100% of the main-section pension you would have gone on to earn, and its Tier 2 enhancement is 25% of it.
Extra pension, earlier awards and the lump sum
If you have been buying extra pension, the England and Wales site says a Tier 1 or 2 award credits you with "all the extra pension that you set out to buy", even if payments were unfinished, and the extra pension is not reduced for early payment. Added years are normally credited in full too. If you paid additional voluntary contributions, the member site says no special rules apply, so you have the same choices as in normal health. Detail on topping up is in LGPS top-ups.
Special rules apply to some people who retire through ill health more than once, or who were paying in on 31 March 2008, were 45 or over then and have been in the LGPS continuously since. These rules are intricate, and the member website says your fund will tell you if you are affected.
Smaller points on LGPS ill health awards
Can I work out my own LGPS ill health pension?
The member website's lump sum calculator covers swapping pension for cash, not what an ill health award pays. Because the award turns on your pay, service and tier, ask your fund for an estimate.
Can part of the award be swapped for cash?
Yes. The member website says even extra pension you bought can be swapped for cash in the same way as the main LGPS pension. The general rate, given on its page about how your pension is worked out rather than in the ill health section, is: "For every £1 of annual pension you give up you get £12 of lump sum." What that means in pounds, and the tax limits, depend on your award; see the LGPS tax-free lump sum and tax on ill health pensions. Serious ill-health lump sums are covered in cashing in a pension because of ill health.
Does it cost my employer money?
It can. The conditions in regulation 35 are about your health and capacity for work, and cost is not one of them. On the funding side, West Sussex Pension Fund's valuation report as at 31 March 2025 (March 2026) says employers may be required to pay the fund the capital costs of ill-health retirements that exceed the actuary's assumptions. How employer rates are set is in LGPS employer contributions.
How does this compare with other public schemes?
Each scheme sets its own tiers, and benefits can interact with the pension (see Universal Credit and ill health pensions). See ill health retirement in the UK, NHS, civil service and teachers, or the age rules.
Before you ask for the decision
Check that your service has reached the two-year qualifying period, collect your medical evidence, and ask your employer and fund which forms they use. Whether you are about to ask your employer to begin, or a decision letter has just landed, an FCA-authorised adviser will help you weigh the options by phone, free, after you leave your details on this page.
Sources: LGPS member websites for England and Wales and for Scotland; LGPS Regulations 2013, regulations 35 to 38, on legislation.gov.uk; LGPS (Scotland) Regulations 2018, regulation 34; NILGOSC, ill-health retirement; West Sussex Pension Fund valuation report, March 2026. All read 26 to 27 October 2026.