Sargeant remedy
When the Government reformed public service pension schemes in 2014 and 2015 they introduced protections for older members. In December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that younger members of the Judges' and Firefighters' Pension schemes had been discriminated against because the protections implemented didn't apply to them.
After a number of further court cases and appeals going as far as an application to the Supreme Court, the Government accepted that discrimination had been found and committed to make changes to all main public sector schemes to remove it. This ruling is often called the 'McCloud or Sargeant judgment' after the names of the people who brought the Judges' and Firefighters cases.
How is it being remedied?
The challenge the Government has faced is that none of the public sector schemes have identical rules or introduced their new schemes in the same way, or indeed at the same time.
The process to implement Remedy is complicated and requires changes to our administration software. This will take time to do and we are working with our provider to do it as soon as possible.
Not all members are affected by remedy. Members that are eligible to make choices for the remedy period must:
- have been in pensionable service on or before 31 March 2012; and
- had pensionable service between 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022; and
- not have a gap in service of 5 years or more (known as a disqualifying break).
Pensionable service does not have to have been in the firefighters’ pension scheme, it could also have been in another relevant public service pension scheme i.e. NHS, Teachers or Local Government. You can read more about this in the Remedy FAQs at the bottom of this page.
Active and deferred members
If you are in scope for Remedy you will be able to choose whether you want to receive your former scheme pension or new scheme pension for the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 at the point you retire. This is called Deferred Choice Underpin.
We have to show you a comparison of the two sets of benefits on a Remediable Service Statement (RSS) in your 2024 Annual Benefit Statement. We have been working with our software provider to fix and test the system and will produce statements as soon as we can. Production of statements is ongoing, for the latest position for active members please see the statements page here.
We're working to produce deferred benefit statement RSS and have not produced these yet.
If you log in to My Pension you will see that your pension record currently shows you as being a member of FPS 2015. As soon as we are able to reflect your 'roll-back' position we will update our system.
Pensioner members
If you are in scope for Remedy we will contact you to explain the difference between the two sets of benefits you are entitled to. We are working through cases as quickly as we can.
The LGA have also produced two videos giving a summary of Remedy which you may find useful. You can watch them on their website here along with the latest remedy FAQs too.