In case you missed it in our winter newsletter, on 1 October 2023, the McCloud remedy was written in to LGPS regulations. ‘McCloud’ is commonly used to refer to a 2018 court judgment, which ruled that the protection given to older members of the public service pension schemes, when they reformed to become Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) pension schemes, was discriminatory against younger members of these schemes.
For the LGPS, the discrimination related to the underpinning of the pension a member would receive for pensionable service during the period 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2022; as it only applied to members who, on 31 March 2012, were within 10 years of reaching their 65th birthday. Members who benefited from this protection would, on their retirement, receive the higher of their CARE pension or the pension they would have received if the LGPS had continued to be a final salary scheme; this protection is referred to as ‘the underpin’.
After a long wait, the government finally amended the LGPS regulations last year, to ensure that the underpin protection is also applied to younger members, and that this protection is backdated to April 2014 (so may apply to people who have already left the scheme, such as deferred members like you). This change to the scheme rules is known as the ‘McCloud remedy’.
Depending on your circumstances, you may qualify for an underpin. However, not all members will qualify for an underpin, and most of those who do qualify won’t get an increase. This is because, for most members, the pension they had in the CARE scheme is higher than they would’ve had, if the final salary scheme had continued beyond 2014.
To determine whether you qualify for an underpin, please visit our McCloud hub.