McCloud update- action for employers
When the government reformed public service pension schemes in 2014 and 2015, they introduced protections for older scheme members. The Court of Appeal ruled that younger members of the Judges’ and Firefighters’ Pension Schemes were discriminated against because the protections did not apply to them. You can read more about this in our employer's newspost from August.
The government has now confirmed that there'll be changes to all public sector schemes to remove this age discrimination.
The government and the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB) are having high level discussions about what this means for the LGPS. The SAB is confident the outcome will give younger members the same protection that's given to older members.
The protection compares the benefits due under the current rules with the benefits that would've been paid if the scheme had not changed in 2014, and pays the higher amount. This protection will apply automatically, so LGPS members who meet the qualifying criteria don't need to take any action.
It's important members are made aware that many of them will not see an increase to their pension benefits. For others, any increase is likely to be small because of low salary growth since the new scheme was introduced.
The SAB will continue to work with the government to make sure the necessary changes to the LGPS are fully applied and that all members automatically get the protection they're due. Changes to the scheme will be backdated to April 2014 and will apply to qualifying members who left the LGPS after that date.
A group has been set up by the SAB to help LGPS administrating authorities and employers with the challenge of communicating and applying these changes.
Important- action for employers
Any remedy is likely to involve recalculation of member benefits. To do this, we'll need a full history of all part-time hour changes and service breaks for all members since 1 April 2014 and have service from before this date. This includes anyone who started later but added service from before 1 April 2014 into the scheme.
If you haven’t been supplying this information to us we may be asking for this in the near future. Please don't destroy any of this data for your LGPS members. If you've changed your payroll provider since 1 April 2014, please make sure you still have access to this information if we need it. If you don’t, and haven’t already given this information to us, please let us know by emailing pensions@shropshire.gov.uk or calling 01743 252130.
It's recommended that all future hour changes for your employees are sent to us through i-Connect and any service breaks are submitted using the correct form. Please visit our Forms and Guidance library webpage for our forms.