Partial retirement is a popular option for members in the approach to full retirement, which allows members to take their pension benefits whilst they continue to work for their employer either on a reduced hours basis, or by reducing their grade. The employer sets the policy on this. For both the Environment Agency (EA) and for Natural Resources Wales (NRW) employees, the end result would need to be a minimum salary reduction of 20%.
In most cases, members taking partial retirement choose to take all their benefits accrued up to the date of partial retirement. However, there are options to take parts of their benefits and leave the rest to take on full retirement. As a minimum, they’d need to take the benefits accrued up to 31 March 2008, or they can take the benefits up to 31 March 2014.
There have been some changes to the internal processes in the last year for EA employees. This is now managed between the employee and their line manager. The process is set out in steps with full guidance available to support line managers with an employee applying for partial retirement.
For NRW employees, the process is currently slightly different – but they are looking at improving their current process shortly.
In all cases, Capita are only able to provide partial retirement figures when a request is made through the route detailed in the internal process guidance. In most cases, where there is a cost associated with taking partial retirement, it would be unlikely that the employer would agree to meet this cost.
Please refer to your own employer’s guidance on the internal process for this. This will be found on your internal employee website.