What is the Group Pension Claim?

The Police Federation of England and Wales launched a compensation claim against the Government on behalf of members who were victims of discrimination and suffered  ‘injury to feeling’ as a result of the changes to members’ pensions by the introduction of the 2015 scheme. The application process for the Group Compensation Claim has closed.

The Government has stated it will put right the pension losses suffered. The purpose of this claim is to ensure those who have not already submitted a claim in respect of the pension discrimination are also considered for any compensation the court considers appropriate for the distress caused by the discriminatory changes.

The claim is being handled on our behalf by the leading UK and international law firm Penningtons Manches Cooper.

Claim brought by members represented by Leigh Day

For the avoidance of any confusion, please note that this claim is no part of any claim brought by members who are represented by Leigh Day solicitors and is not impacted by the recent judgment in that case, which has no bearing on these proceedings.

Updates and email enquiries

Given the size of the group of claimants we represent (circa 40,000), we are unable to respond to every single email we receive, especially if the answer to the enquiry has already been provided in an update.  We therefore again request that members avoid emailing unless absolutely necessary. 

If you do need to email us at pensionclaim@polfed.org, please ensure you provided your full name, date of birth and your address(es) between 2020-2021.  This will enable us to check that you are a claimant in this claim without having to ask for this information. 

Please direct any queries relating to this claim to pensionclaim@polfed.org.

June 2025

Please see the below update from Penningtons regarding the Group Pension Claim. If you do get correspondence from PFEW then please respond as soon as possible as we need to resolve the administrative issues that have been identified.

This is a brief update which follows on from the update provided in May 2025. Please refer to that update for further information.

The Tribunal has listed a Preliminary Hearing (PH) on 25 September 2025. The purpose of the PH is to consider the issues raised by both parties and for the Tribunal to decide how the case should be managed. We will be instructing Counsel to appear on behalf of the Claimants for the PH.

We continue to deal with various administrative issues including, but not limited to the following:

(1) Claimants who wish to withdraw from the GPC
(2) Organising claimants who appear in both the tapered and no-protection group of claims into the correct claim
(3) reducing claimants who appear multiple times in the claim to just one claim.

We have identified the claimants we need to liaise with in relation to (2) and (3) above. If you have been contacted by us or PFEW on our behalf about these issues, please can you provide your response and instructions as quickly as possible. If you have not been contacted, it means that we do not need anything further from you at this stage.

If there is anything further we require ahead of the PH, we will provide a further update and/or contact members as needed. We will in any case provide a further update as to the outcome of the hearing and the next steps.’

March 2025

The claim remains stayed until at least June. There was a comprehensive update published in November 2024 and this was sent to claimants.

There is work going on whilst the stay is in place so that we are administratively ready to proceed once the stay has been lifted.

If you do get an e-mail requiring further information then please respond to it as soon as possible as this will assist in the administrative readiness piece of work.

October 2024 

The PFEW Group Pension Claim is likely to remain stayed behind the case of Aarons, which itself is stayed until June 2025. We do not therefore expect any significant developments in the meantime.

The PFEW claim has been “stayed” (put on hold) pending the conclusion of other similar claims. This includes the claims brought by other police officers who are represented by Leigh Day solicitors (known as ‘Aarons & others’), as well as claims brought by Judges (‘McCloud’ cases) and Firefighters (‘Sargeant’ cases) and other associated litigation which addresses the issue of Remedy.

When a claim is “stayed” it means that the claim does not progress in the Employment Tribunal and legal issues are not being determined; it is on hold. This means that the award for injury to feelings, or any other remedy, will not be determined by the Employment Tribunal whilst the “stay” is in place. This therefore means that there are unlikely to be any developments over the next 12 months.

We understand that a settlement has been agreed in Aarons in relation to the award for injury to feelings. However, there are still other aspects to Remedy which are yet to be determined by the Tribunal in Aarons. The Aarons claims are more advanced, and that is why they are now at the stage where remedy/damages/settlement has been considered.

The Employment Tribunal have advised that the Aarons claims are now “stayed” pending the introduction of pension Remedy legislation in October 2023. We therefore would like to reiterate that the claim PFEW are bringing is a separate claim from the Aarons claims, and this claim is only at the beginning of the litigation process.