NHS Business Services Authority Opiniones 

Note that due to NHS Pensions I have to deal with these idiots.

Firstly today my annoyance is aimed at their NHS 12 month Prepaid Prescription Certificate.

Now, luckily for me my small business doing better. So I happy to pay for this. I am on 6 lots of medication monthly so it makes sense.

To those on a low income who not get old style ESA, I would advise to apply for the NHSBSA Low income scheme.

The NHSBSA do not advertise this scheme. As they are incompetent and do not want people applying for it.

However, alot of people on a low income but not old style ESA, so people who do not get paid much, or are on JSA or UC qualify and these people would save hundereds of pounds and no fines.

This scheme is done on your income not the benefits.

To apply contact the numteys at the NHSBSA. You probably have to contact them hundereds of times, till they direct you to the page. Remember these people lose their fun if they don't have anyone to fine.

My complaint today is that the NHSBSA site is down again. So i cannot buy the 12 month prepaid certificate. They probably down due to the PHP sites crisis as they are a joke of an organisation.

However despite the pharmacy not being able to log in to their system, so I can buy from the pharmacy. That they are worse this week with telephoning them. They think people have hours to waste on the phone, then cut you off. I cannot buy this 12 month prepaid prescription. I am sure that breaks many laws, such as the Equality Act. These idiots don't care.

So I cannot get my medications till this sorted out.

Update: 23/10/2026. I had to chuckle. The NHSBSA is now back online. However the first thing that worked was their fine page. Typical, lets fine people first. Do not worry about NHS Pensions, other NHS care, NHS prescriptions or self paid certificate sites. Let's make sure we have the ability to fine people first and ensure they can navigate the fine page.

As above this is what these staff like to do, fine other people. They won't tell you about help you could get, see low income scheme.

They are NHS staff in name only..They are a bunch of admin staff that work in Newcastle. Now I love to see them working on clinical units. They would all resign after about 24 hours.

Shockingly rude customer service, unprofessional, I asked for a manager call back, made it as difficult as possible the payment line is an absolute joke

After they put my mine into someone else account now they don’t answer my calls you are the worse organisation on planet Earth even in North Korea they don’t act like that

If you really respected yourself you would have managers or supervisor to call and sort problem not tell people to wait 1 month for your f””””””””ing mistake you hire people who don’t know what they doing and we have to pay price

Your organisation is just the worse if I die I will never work in the NHS it was a mistake for life time

Untrained staff, rude customer service they till you something then someone else will till you something else

They promised me to call me today or email me

No call no email when I called I waited for ages when she answered she said we do apologise

I said I don’t want your crap just give me my money it’s your fault you put my money into someone else’s account

I work full time a tax payer and we still get treated like shit I left my job at the NHS because of the discrimination it was as clear as the sunrise

When CQC was about to come they become nice for few weeks after they gone they back to same

I was there for 2 years and interpreter for 3 languages a long my reception job but minimum wage

While someone started 6 month got pay rise I can’t tell who bad it is

Now I have to call them and chase my own money I worked hard for and was taxed twice still sent to someone else

I work tax payer my nose bleed for 5 years they gave same spray when I started getting angry they called the police and ban me for practice

I am still same pain pay my tax, NIN everything but no treatment

Why is zero not an option ? Having waited over 70 days for my wife's pension projection for a mortgage application (high priority apparently) still nothing. At risk of losing buyer and our next property now. The estate agents have told us as much. Why is the NHS Pensions department based in the NE of England ? You said it would arrive by 17th September. It didn't.
Spoke to another man today who was equally useless. There is no direct number for the NHS Pensions department. I wonder why. So you can only call these 3rd party thickos who pass information on. Can someone tell me how to get a job as a human Outlook please ? Sounds lovely. We have now complained yet again and now been told that it could be 15 working days before we get a response. Added to your final 40 working day turnaround for paper work which has never arrived. No institution in the world has turnaround times like this. Unbelievable. You can literally have an inquest, post mortem and death certificate quicker. So we are looking at 85+ days in which time we still won't have received the pensions forecast that we desperately need to get our mortgage in principle. This has also created arguments at home as much we try to just ignore it. But hard to ignore it when it's your life.
To summarise: NHSBAS you're turnaround times are truly abysmal and you can't even honour them. What a joke.
You are not fit for purpose and a whole new management team and office team is required with monthly performance on the agenda to keep you guys to some kind of reasonable, sane turnaround.
Having now exhausted all avenues I will be referring this case to the Pensions Ombudsman as I implore anyone else on here who has had similar issues with these people. Failing that I will simply take legal action, get you in court and you will lose, because you haven't fulfilled a single obligation on your part. You have lied, deceived and been generally incompetent and negligent in your duties.

I honestly hope no one has as much stress and displeasure dealing with you as I have. I have always championed the NHS, not anymore. It's no wonder your whole organisation is in a complete shambles if this how you run your administrative duties.

If I could give zero I would I am a carer and my daughter recently turned 20. She was on my UC at the time of the dental appointment. But the system, (Welford, call centre "agents" and email contacts), have spent hours on what would be a small dental checkup fee. Still not resolved, my anxiety is spiking and they simply don't want to listen.

I am a pensions analyst for a major international bank. The level of service is abysmal, I'll health retirement quotation for my partially sighted wife has taken 3 months, unbelievable. Literally shameful.

It’s difficult to understand how anyone can work within a service like this and become so comfortable treating vulnerable people as reference numbers rather than human beings.

I disclosed that I am disabled, explained that I’d made a genuine mistake and explicitly asked for help. The response showed virtually no acknowledgement, empathy or humanity, just pay by the deadline or we’ll increase the penalty by 50%.

NHSBSA’s own Customer Charter talks about “respect and empathy” and “help and support”. Perhaps the people representing the organisation should read it.

There is something deeply depressing about a workplace culture where this kind of response is considered acceptable.

Archaic system
Several months ago I lost my job and my direct debit bounced for the NHS PPC. I was sent a letter to say that I now owed x amount. I called to try and pay in installments and was promptly told how they want they installments, so boo to you. Anyway everything was seemingly confirmed and no payments came off. A little while later I get another letter to say I failed to make the payments and now owe the full amount. 'I' failed??? No darling, you did! I called and arranged payment to come off my account and your department didn't do your job to collect the funds. So several months later I receive another letter about the outstanding amount. No indication of where or how to pay. I called to make this payment and was told to push all kinds of numbers with dob and ppc ref, then when I finally do get through we go over another set of questions and finally get told oh sorry if you want to make a payment our system is down so you have to call tomorrow. WTH??? So many companies have multiple options of how to pay without speaking to someone, this is number 1 and 2 could you have perhaps put a message in your telephone queuing music that you are having technical problems, instead of making people wait on the line and wasting time? Seriously if I was allowed to I would give you a bunch of words, but that would be seen as abusive... ha ha.

Incompetent ignorant department of government who do not comply with statutory regulations laid down to govern how they are meant to conduct their business and dealings with the public and members of the NHS pensions scheme, ignore emails, do not return phone calls and to make matters worse cannot even comply or meet timeframes provided in their own laid down complaints procedure. These emails are auto generated and still no response, totally ignore clients, THIS AUTHORITY IS NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE. MALADMINISTRATION APPEARS RIFE. Its time Ministers acted to sort out this mess of a department.

I was fined by the NHS Business Services Authority for claiming a free prescription while I was out of work and receiving Jobseeker's Allowance. It turns out that only people on income-related Employment & Support Allowance and illeagal imigrants qualify for free prescriptions — not standard JSA — but this distinction is not made clear anywhere when you're filling in the exemption box at the pharmacy counter.

There's no obvious warning, no simple checker, nothing that stops someone in good faith from ticking the wrong box.

Instead of a warning letter or a simple correction, I was hit with a penalty charge on top of the original prescription cost. This cost me just under £100.00.

No account was taken of the fact that I was unemployed and doing my best to get by, or that the mistake was an honest one caused by confusing rules rather than any attempt to defraud anyone.

I've worked and paid taxes my entire adult life, and the one time I needed a bit of support, the system's response was to punish a genuine misunderstanding rather than explain it. If the eligibility rules are going to be this narrow and this poorly signposted, the least the NHSBSA could do is make them clear before people get caught out — not fine them after the fact.

Extremely disappointing experience. Would not recommend relying on the guidance given at the point of purchase — check the small print yourself, because the NHSBSA won't help you avoid the trap.

Money grabbing scheme from hard working people for human and/or system errors. Appalling system. Highly recommend they are investigated for fraud and unlawful practices.

Despite sending correct evidence, that I was entitled too still asking for paperwork that I have already sent which clearly state under threshold

Like the vast majority of people reviewing the BSA, we would also give zero stars as a rating if we could. It is an utterly appalling organisation, a ghastly outsource company the NHS created, that glibly sends out Penalty Charge Notices to one and all.

Not only do they attack those recovering from cancer and other awful ailments, they also attack those with serious mental illness. Our son has had several episodes of extreme psychosis. We have come close to loosing him on at least two occasions.

Because our local health authority wrongly and illegally pushed their S 117 Mental Health Act discharge medication onto our local pharmacy, our son fell into a trap of being relentlessly pursued by these people, as if he were some sort of criminal. The CEO of the BSA should be sacked 🤬 Shame on you.

I made a call to make a very simple enquiry from the information that they have on record for myself. I have never come across anything that felt like being deliberately unhelpful and arrogant too. This review would be best start with ZERO star. That one star I am giving is undeserved

Stunning service that outstrips private sector or other pension schemes. Customer service both by phone and email phenomenal. They pay promptly and are very good with projections. Second time I have claimed this as I left the NHS from a full time role in 2022 but came back in a bank NHS paid role in 2023. Have no words for such a fabulous service and thank you to a superior customer call centre UK based❤️

this company sent me 3 letters with fines and l have mental health issues and my financial appointee looks my money and benefits in the local council and have harassed me 3 times to the point where this had made me ill how do you people sleep with this? bang out of order i have to take medicines 💊 every day or i become ill shame you

Appalling service. 101 in a phone cue. Took over a month to reply to an log in issue with NHS Pensions site, then 2 weeks to even get an email responce back.

I have never ever experienced such a poor run service in every way.It really sums up Britain of today. Run by un-experienced staff and when you finally get to speak to a human, they have no idea

Would give zero if possible.

Awful customer service.

Complaint not dealt with or actioned for weeks.

Stop fines for women claiming free NHS prescriptions during pregnancy!

Was fined despite my GP practice offering to write a letter confirming they were at fault. Appeal dismissed and got the sense no review had taken place. Not nice to deal with over the phone. I also found it wasn’t easy to check when a PPC was due for renewal. Thankfully I can now avoid that inconvenience by paying by direct debit and that’s the only reason I’m giving 2 stars and not 1.

When I went back to the NHS for a temporary contract - they auto-enrolled me, then didn't provide me with any information as to how I could get out. When I phoned them in January 2022, I was misled (Lied to) and told that despite already having a frozen pension (Frozen for over 16 years) any contributions, I paid during the temporary contract would be repaid when I left. They then refused to repay the money, claiming that my other pension and that pension were suddenly the same scheme.
My complaint to the Pension Ombudsman took three years and they awarded the win to the NHS because of the NHS wording in their polices and because they were told by a C Welham that I would benefit greatly by having the pension policy.
As I'm over 55 I have been trying to get both pensions paid since 21st January 2026.

They have started paying the original pension (1995 scheme) but I am still trying to get issues with the 2015 scheme resolved. They caused un-neccessary delays and then finally sent a letter dated the 27th March 2026, in which the figures - do not match the information supplied by C Welham to both Myself and the Ombudsman in an email in August 2026.

They have exceeded the 30 days and additional 20 days deadline. The 27th March letter states I have to make a decision within 28 days and I cannot get them to explain - the £1.3k difference.

I have copied in everyone including Mr Brodie and the ombudsman, but they are still not providing this information to me. Last Friday - I was promised by Vicki that I would be updated every 2-3 days, I sent her an email yesterday and she failed to answer. I have sent several emails today and still they have failed to reply.

The NHS BSA is not fit for purpose and we are wasting our time for a NHS body that treats their pension members like we are a waste of their time.