Personal Public Service Number - Format

Format

The format of the number is a unique alphanumeric in the general form 8765432A. The number is assigned at the registration of birth of the child and is issued on a "Social Services Card" often when a child reaches the legal age of employment, currently 16, otherwise a "Letter of Entitlement" is issued. The same format was used by the Department of Education and Science as the "Pupil Number" since 1994 and this caused some concern and confusion as it was in the same format and used the same check character formula, but more often different from the PPS No. In August 2000 the department instigated a program to remove the Pupil Number and replace it with the PPS No in future on records.

The format is 7 numeric characters (including leading zeros), a check character and sometimes a second letter, which if it exists, will normally be a W. This extra letter was used for women - "W" from "wife" - who married and automatically adopted the same number as their husband, though this practice stopped in 1991 chiefly due to equal rights concerns. The present policy is that these W numbers are eliminated when the bearer's husband dies, or when they become separated or divorced. Sometimes, an extra character (either a T or an X) may be used to relate to specific employment or welfare situations such as a husband & wife being employed by the same company, or an employee being employed twice by the same company (where two separate PPS numbers would be needed for reporting purposes) or in a welfare situation, where a separated spouse receives some of the customer's payment on their own behalf.

The Social Services Card also contains a number called the "Primary Account Number" (PAN), this is the long main sequence embossed near the centre of the card. This consists of the issuer number of the International Organization for Standardization, the PPS number and a card issue number; any letters are converted to numbers using the standard convention of A=1, B=2 and so forth. Basic personal information is encoded on the magnetic stripe on the rear of the card such as date of birth and sex.