Pensions: True or False

Dear Brother/ Sister,

Pensions: True or False

Fire Brigades Union representatives sit on the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB) England as well as the Board (or equivalents) in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The SAB is commissioning a suite of illustrative member scenarios to provide members with a better understanding of the implications of the McCloud/ Sargeant remedy on their benefits. This is to include a selection of members personas across the schemes, with benefits illustrated at a range of key retirement milestones.

Barnett Waddingham was appointed to deliver this work. Attached is a warm-up communication to answer some key concerns or recurring questions that members have about the changes that are due to take place on 1 April 2022 and beyond.

Even though there is a lot of information available, the SAB still find that there are many ‘myths’, ‘untruths’, ‘fake news’ etc. circulating and it is clear from activity on various social media platforms that some firefighters do have gaps in their knowledge when it comes to remedy. It is a concern of the SAB that employees may be relying on these forums to make life changing decisions and therefore feel that it is appropriate and desirable for individuals to be fully armed with factual information before making such decisions.

Attached is the FPS 2015 Remedy ‘fact checker’ communication which has been developed by Barnett Waddingham, in collaboration with the Scheme Advisory Board, the Board secretariat, and the Scheme Management & Administration committee. We hope that this document will alleviate some concerns and answer some unknown questions for the FPS membership.

It is intended that the illustrative scenarios will be provided by early March and they will be circulated as soon as they become available.

Yours in unity,

Mark Rowe
National Officer