NHS doctors, dentists, and teachers are being pushed into early retirement by lifetime allowance changes, Financial Planning firms have reported.

Rutherford Wilkinson and Tilney Bestinvest have both said the reforms to the lifetime allowance have hit professionals working in these public sector roles.

Mike Gordon, technical director, at Rutherford Wilkinson, a firm of Chartered Financial Planners in the north-east, said the reduced allowance has made it less lucrative to work for longer.

He said: “During a time where the NHS is desperately in need for more medical professionals with staffing shortages, it is no surprise that from Rutherford Wilkinson’s specialist expertise, working with hundreds of professionals in this area that early retirement, that penalties are taken in favour of facing tax charges for exceeding the lifetime allowance.

“For many savers in generous final salary schemes, they may be surprised that they are caught by the new rules which reduced the lifetime allowance from £1.25m to £1m from April. A pension that exceeds £43,500 and lump sum equivalent to three times the pension at retirement would exceed the £1m lifetime allowance.

“By accepting an actuarially reduced pension and lump sum on early retirement, the lifetime allowance value is reduced.

“Whilst accruing benefits in excess of the allowance is possible, subject to extra taxation, many GPs view this as an incentive to retire earlier and leave the NHS, the opposite of the government’s stated intention.”

Further “salt into the wound”, he said, was that members of the NHS Pension scheme are now being asked for a charge of £120 to acquire the valuation of their benefits at 5 April 2014 or 2016 to enable application for Individual Protection, a cost that did not exist until July this year.

A client who has retired from the army has been asked to pay £240 for a pension statement to evaluate his funds, he said.

Jason Hollands, managing director at Tilney Bestinvest, said: “The effect on defined benefit schemes is particularly damaging.

“Our Financial Planners are seeing clear signs that these measures, especially the latest reduction in the LTA, are prompting some public sector professionals, such as senior NHS staff, head teachers and deputy head teachers (especially in the academy system), to elect for early retirement at a time when the health and education systems face staffing shortages and the teaching profession is seeing competition from well-paid posts abroad which will intensify as a result of the depreciation of Sterling.

“Those with a projected defined benefit pension entitlement of £43,500 upwards in the NHS or Teachers Pension schemes face the prospect of breaching the LTA.”