Upcoming telephone line downtime – 24 September
Please be advised that our telephone lines will be unavailable from 12:30pm on the afternoon of 24 September due to a scheduled staff training event. We appreciate your understanding.
Guidance about changes to membership.
It is essential that any change in employment conditions that will ultimately affect the calculation of a scheme member's benefits, be notified to the pension scheme administrators by completing Form LGS15B (or by completion of a different form as agreed between the employing authority and the scheme administrator).
The service standards require the employing authority to notify the scheme administrators of any contractual change within 20 working days of the effective date of the change.
The following changes should be notified to the pension administrators:
If an employee moves to a period of reduced contractual or nil pay as a result of sickness or injury or during a period of relevant child related leave (ordinary maternity, paternity or adoption leave and paid additional maternity, paternity or adoption leave) the Scheme employer is required to apply Assumed Pensionable Pay (APP) for pension purposes.
Note that this does not include unpaid additional maternity, paternity or adoption leave available at the end of relevant child related leave. This is to be treated as unpaid leave of absence and no APP accrues during that period (unless the member enters into an APC contract to purchase the 'lost' pension in which case the APP figure will be required in order to calculate the 'lost' pension).
If the member was in the 50/50 section prior to dropping to nil contractual pay because of sickness or injury they should be returned to the main section from the beginning of the next pay period (provided they are still on no pay at that time due to sickness or injury).
For reserve forces service leave a Scheme employer needs to calculate APP whilst the reservist is on leave and drop that into the member's cumulative figures so that they continue to build up pension as if they were still at work. The employer would pay no employer contribution to the Pension Fund on that APP but would tell both the reservist and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the APP figure and the employee and employer contribution due on that amount. The MoD would deduct the employee contribution from the reservist and pay that, together with the employer contribution, directly over to the administering authority.
If the Scheme employer continues to pay the reservist some pay whilst they are on reserve forces service leave, neither the employee or employer contributions are payable on that pay (because contributions are payable on the APP figure) and that pay is not added into the member's cumulative figures because the APP has been added into the cumulative figures.
Scheme employers will still be responsible for providing details of breaks in membership that occur prior to Normal Pension Age (NPA) due to:
For those members who:
This is so the administering authority can determine whether the final salary benefit underpin for these members at NPA exceeds their post 31 March 2014 CARE pension.
If a member has had a leave of absence due to authorised unpaid leave, unpaid additional child related leave they can elect to buy back the 'lost' period of pension through the purchase of a Shared Cost Additional Pension Contributions (SCAPC) contract . As the member will not have earned any pensionable pay the pension they would have built up during the period has been lost.
Members can choose to buy the lost pension by spreading payment over a number of complete years or by means of a one off lump sum. The employer will meet two thirds of the cost of buying back lost pension other than for an absence due to a trade dispute, provided the member elects to buy back the 'lost' pension within 30 days of returning to work.
Employers are required to contact scheme members who have returned from a period of unpaid leave or child related leave to advise them of the option to buy back the 'lost pension' during that time. The following list of actions must be followed by employers in this instance:
A series of specimen letters have been produced for your use when contacting your scheme members:
Template Letters 1, 2 and 3
Buying back 'lost pension' factsheet