Early access to FAS payments
Qualifying members can access their FAS payments early in the following circumstances:
Payments can also be made to eligible survivors of qualifying members who have accessed their FAS payments early in this way.
Ill Health
To receive early, reduced, ill-health payments from the FAS, you must be:
- an eligible member of a qualifying pension scheme;
- within five years of your normal retirement age (see below);
- unable to work due to ill health;
- likely to be unable to work due to ill health until your normal retirement age; and
- not already entitled to an annual payment from the FAS.
It is possible that you may still be entitled to ill-health payments from the FAS if you are still working but have been advised that you should not work.
If you satisfy the conditions of entitlement, you will be entitled to ill health payments from the latest of:
- The date the legislation for ill health payments came into force, or
- The date the FAS operational unit is first notified that you are unable to work due to ill health and likely to continue to be so until normal retirement age, or
- The date you reach five years before your normal retirement age.
FAS payments are normally paid at 90% of your ‘accrued pension’ (the pension you built up in your scheme), less any scheme pension you receive, up to an annual limit of £26,000, known as ‘the cap’.
Ill-health payments from the FAS will be reduced to take account of the longer period of time the payment could be made for (because the payment begins up to five years before your normal retirement age).
If you think you may be entitled to an early, reduced ill health payment, please contact us for an Ill health application form (2.03MB) 
. You can read full details of FAS payments in the FAS P5 Ill Health (156KB) leaflet.
Terminal Illness
FAS payments can be made to a qualifying scheme member of any age where they have a progressive disease and their death in consequence of that disease can reasonably be expected within 6 months. In these circumstances the FAS payment is not reduced.
Please contact us if you would like further information about how to apply for this type of payment.
Survivors
For FAS, a survivor is the surviving wife, husband or civil partner of a member or former member of a qualifying pension scheme who died after the scheme started to wind-up.
At what age is a survivor entitled to FAS payments?
Payments to survivors can begin regardless of the age of the survivor.
The survivor of a qualifying member becomes eligible for payments from whichever is the later of:
- 14 May 2004; or
- the day after the day on which the qualifying member died.
Payments are backdated to the date the survivor became eligible.
Survivors will receive a payment from FAS only if the member would have received a FAS payment.
What about surviving spouses of members who died before wind-up commenced?
Survivors of pension scheme members who died before the start of scheme wind-up will be ‘qualifying members’ for FAS purposes in their own right subject to their meeting the eligibility criteria. This is because they would have been entitled to pension payments themselves from the scheme before it started to wind-up.
How are survivor’s payments calculated?
FAS is able to calculate annual payments when a pension scheme has discharged its liabilities to a member, which is usually on completion of wind-up. For survivors annual payments are determined using different methods which will generally depend on whether qualifying members died during wind-up or after wind-up has been completed.
- Method A: if a qualifying member dies after wind-up, their survivor will usually receive half of the amount that the qualifying member was receiving, or would have received, from the FAS.
- Method B: if a qualifying member dies before wind-up is completed, the amount of assistance payable to their survivor will generally be 50% of the member’s ‘expected pension’ multiplied by 0.9 minus the ‘actual pension’ that the survivor will receive from the member’s scheme when the scheme completes wind-up.
The cap applies in each instance.
Initial payments are paid at the discretion of the FAS Scheme Manager where we are waiting for the scheme’s liabilities to be discharged and so cannot calculate annual payments.
The amount of interim payment payable is calculated in line with method B above but taking account of any pension the scheme is paying to the survivor whilst it winds up.
What about surviving spouses or civil partners of pension scheme members who qualified for FAS Ill health payments?
Widow/ers and surviving civil partners are eligible for FAS assistance.
Survivors of members who had qualified for interim ill health payments or final ill health payments will receive assistance payments based on the member’s early payment rate. Like annual payments and initial payments to survivors such payments are based on half of the member’s FAS entitlement.
What should I do to get a payment as a survivor ?
If your spouse or civil partner was already receiving FAS then we should have your details and payments to you should begin immediately. If your spouse or civil partner had been receiving FAS but you are not then you should contact us.
If your spouse or civil partner wasn’t getting FAS when they died and neither are you then you should either contact us or your scheme trustees to see whether they have contacted us to let us have your details or those of your late spouse or civil partner.
If you need further information about FAS please contact us.