June 2021 - Guidance for members about to retire 

The Home Office has now issued an update to the existing informal and non-statutory guidance on immediate detriment cases.

The guidance applies to pipeline immediate detriment cases (i.e. those cases where the member is about to retire and receive their pension) and does not cover where a pension is already in payment. This is technical guidance and aimed primarily at pension managers and practitioners.

As you will know, to implement remedy in full, both primary and secondary legislation are required, as well as administration work (at local Force level) to implement the changes. The deferred choice underpin will be implemented by October 2023.

As a result, the guidance will not offer resolution to all the current issues – there are outstanding technical issues that are being worked through across the public sector pension schemes and the responsible Government departments. The updated guidance aims to provide ways forward where possible.

The guidance provides informal advice but the overall responsibility for interpreting and applying the pension scheme regulations still remains with each Chief Constable as the relevant scheme manager. Forces and administrators will need to consider the guidance in relation to their own process and systems.

April 2021 - Seeking evidence that Remedy will not cause further discrimination 

On 20 April 2021 we wrote to the Home Secretary to seek evidence and clarification that the implementation of the public sector pensions Remedy would not cause further discrimination to any of our members. You can read the letter here. 

In our response to the Remedy consultation we raised serious concerns around the impact of the Remedy proposals on some groups of members. Our letter to the Home Secretary invites comment and justification on a number of potential issues that we have identified in our initial response to the Government’s proposed Remedy to the discrimination.

We have also written directly to the Home office on a number of other concerns including taxation implications of the Remedy, the position of late joiners to PPS 87, and non-club transfers affected during the Remedy period. Additionally, we continue to discuss the logistics of the implementation of the Remedy with the Police Scheme Advisory Board.

February 2021 – Government consultation response

We have now had the opportunity to go through the Government’s consultation response in detail and have met with the Police Scheme Advisory Board to establish what this means for all of our members on the varying schemes.

In short summary the Government response details that:

• The Remedy applies to all who were members of a ‘legacy’ public service pension scheme (or eligible to be) immediately prior to 1 April 2012 and have a period of service after 31 March 2015 during which they were members of a legacy or reformed scheme. 
• If you joined the police service on or after 1 April 2012 the Remedy will not apply to you.
• The Remedy period is 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022.  Eligible members will have a choice on retirement whether their scheme benefits relating to the Remedy period remain in their legacy scheme, or they choose to convert it to 2015 scheme membership. This is particularly helpful as we know there will be some who are better off in the reformed schemes than the legacy schemes.

What is positive from the response is that the Government has chosen to implement the Remedy through the Deferred Choice Underpin option, which was the option we recommended in our response to the consultation back in October 2020. This means that members do not have to choose which scheme they receive benefits from during the Remedy period until they reach retirement age and enables them to make their decision based on fact rather than an estimate.

You can find Q and A’s with more information here.