SL
The sound advice is to commute for the simple reason that your gratuity is tax free - your pension is not. As always however there is a personal dimension to the decision. If say you going to be putting your feet up and solely dependant upon your pension for income then you may wish to maximize your monthly pension payment and by not commuting. If on the other hand you are leaving to full time (hopefully well paid) employment then you may not be all that bothered about a lower monthly pension payment vice a larger tax free gratuity.
As for request for pension forecast - this is definitely sound advice. I ask for one every 2 years and make a point of retaining the statement; harder for the buggers to default then! Just drop a line - use text speak for the poor JPA chaps , they don’t do big words well!