FOI reference: FOI-2026-3595
You asked
Could I submit the following request for information under FOI please?
- The total amount withdrawn from pensions in tax-free lump sums for the past five financial years, broken down by year (2025/26, 2024/25, etc)
- The number of withdrawals for each year over the same period
We said
Thank you for your request.
1. Data for funded occupational pension schemes are collected through our Financial Survey of Pensions Schemes (FSPS). The amount withdrawn in lump sums from these schemes (including death benefits) in the period requested can be seen in the associated download named FOI-2026-3595 - Financial Survey of Pensions Schemes Lump Sum Withdrawals FY 2020-21 - 2024-25.xlsx.
Total lump sum benefits data are published in our Funded occupational pension schemes in the UK dataset. Data are published up to Q3 of 2025. We have not yet produced data for Q4 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026. These will be published in our Funded occupational pension schemes in the UK dataset in the future.
2. We do not directly collect the number of lump sum withdrawals made.
As well as the FSPS, we also collect data on pensions from households in the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS). If you are interested in exploring the pensions data we collect on WAS, please see our Pension wealth: wealth in Great Britain dataset.
Also note that WAS is a two-year survey, so any results would be broken down by the two-year period of WAS waves/rounds, rather than a singular year. The latest WAS release, Round 8, covers April 2020 to March 2022.
You can also access our publicly released microdata through the UK Data Service, which is free of charge and should be sufficient for most analyses.
There is an option to gain access to more granular data, however, there is an approval process for this. You can obtain information about this service and access the microdata through our Secure Research Service (SRS). If you need further support with the process of accessing this data, please email srs.customer.support@ons.gov.uk.