On 20 December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled in McCloud/Sargeant that the transitional arrangements introduced as part of the 2015 reforms to the Firefighters' and Judges' Pension Schemes were discriminatory and, therefore unlawful. The government accepted that this ruling applied to all main public service pension schemes and is working on removing this discrimination for all affected scheme members (including for the police pension scheme).
This work is complex and will take time to be finalised as currently there is no legislation or scheme regulation in place. When the necessary changes have been made to the scheme you will not have to do anything and we will contact you automatically with further information.
Please note until changes have been made to the legislation and the Scheme Regulations have been updated, we are unable to provide any estimates based upon the anticipated changes to the Scheme. Further details will be provided when more information is known.
The Pensions Office is working directly with the City of London Police to be able to implement changes to the scheme once they have been formally confirmed and the necessary legislation has been passed. If you are affected, we will contact you automatically.
Timeline of events
February 2021
The government released the response to the consultation on McCloud/Sargeant, It outlines the proposals for implementing a remedy. Read the government response.
HM Treasury also produced a leaflet in respect of public sector pension schemes that were reformed in 2015.
At this stage, the government proposals do not cover all individual circumstances. There is further detail required and police pension scheme legislation changes must be introduced.
There are four key things to note:
- Members with 1987 benefits, will still be able to retire and receive the 1987 portion of their benefits when they originally expected to, for example age 50 with at least 25 years' service, or age 55, or 30 years’ service etc.
- To remove discrimination, all members regardless of current protection status, will move to the 2015 scheme from 1 April 2022.
- Eligible members will have their pension scheme membership for the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 (the remedy period) moved to their "legacy scheme". This will take place between 1 April 2022 and 1 October 2023 and will involve many retrospective calculations to be carried out for each member.
- Eligible members will be able to make a choice between their original legacy scheme (final salary) or CARE scheme for the benefits they accrue during the remedy period. 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022. This decision will not have to be made until the point of retirement.
August 2020
The Home Office issued a consultation about the McCloud/Sargeant remedy. The consultation ended on 11 October 2020. The following are the FAQs the Home Office released in respect of the consultation: