Ill-health retirement
Ill-health retirement (IHR) – Who can apply?
The IHR process can be instigated by an individual officer or by management (H1process), providing the officer is or has been a member of one of the police pension schemes.
When considering IHR it is important to recognise that the threshold is high. The starting point is that retention of the officer should be priority over retirement. Therefore, the Force and officer should have approached the issue of Reasonable Adjustments and alternative roles prior to IHR in most cases.
The basic requirements of IHR consideration are that the officer is likely to have a disability, all treatment options have been exhausted and that they are unable to fulfil the ordinary duties of a police officer.
If this is not the case, then IHR is not approachable yet. If they are on a 2006 and/or 2015 pension, then there are additional questions that are required to be considered.
In normal circumstances an officer will have four forms to complete when considering IHR. Three of these forms are concerning access to medical records.
The fourth form is the officer’s IHR form to complete to highlight why they wish to be considered for IHR.
The different approaches to an IHR application.
